Spellbound
by Witticaster Cole
Summary: This is the story of how Cora Hale came home, and why it took her seven years to do so, featuring werewolves, ghosts, minotaurs, wandering magicians, talking birds, gryphons, wolpertingers, assassins, and one particularly stubborn federal investigator. It's also a story about magic, and how it works, and-more importantly-why. (AU)
1. Finders, Keepers

**Notes:** This exists in the same universe as my _Strange Lives_ series, but it's not necessary to read that in order to read this. Beta'd by Dusty, whose input I value more than I value most things.

* * *

_**Spellbound**_

**Chapter One: "Finders, Keepers"**

It's said that werewolves have little aptitude for magic.

This is technically true, in the same way that fish have little aptitude for sailing.

**o**

Imagine a forest, green and untamed. Imagine the perfect, muffled solitude of the deep wood.

Imagine old trees with thick trunks, perfect for climbing. Imagine streams and gullies, rocky hills, caves and hollows; a paradise for any child lucky enough to call it their backyard.

Imagine a little girl, walking with practiced ease through the trees, scrambling over rocks and balancing on logs.

Imagine—

"Cora!"

Cora groaned and hopped down off the end of the log. There was no point trying to hide. Her brother always found her eventually.

She'd never been this far into the woods before. Cora was supposed to stay close to the house. It wasn't exactly a rule. More like a warning. Bad things happened to young werewolves who strayed too far from their packs.

"Found you," said a voice by Cora's ear.

Cora startled, but clamped down on the urge to snarl and leap away. Derek only did that to get a reaction out of her.

"Go away," she said.

"Mom told me to come find you," Derek replied. He smelled like lots of other people; he must have come right out here after he got home from school.

Cora said, "I wanna be alone," and kept walking.

"You can't stay out here forever," Derek said, following along behind her.

"Can, too."

"What are you gonna eat?"

"Rabbits."

"Really?" Derek said, obviously trying not to laugh. "You'd eat a cute little bunny rabbit?"

"_You're_ a bunny rabbit," Cora shot back.

"Look, just come back to the house."

"It's too crowded now," Cora said. "And it's full of stupid kids."

"They're your cousins, and you're _nine_."

"It's so _loud_, Derek! At least you get to go to school. You're not stuck in the house all day with them."

"They're not gonna be here forever," Derek said. "Just until Uncle Teddy and Aunt Liz get back on their feet."

"Cool. I'll just stay out here until then."

"Cora—"

And then they found the cottage.

There wasn't much left of it. Only two of the four walls remained standing, so badly overgrown that they looked like a natural extension of the forest floor, and the roof was long gone.

Cora said, "Oh, _cool_," and ran straight toward it.

"Cora, _wait_—"

She stepped through what used to be the front door and looked around. The cottage was old, _really_ old, every surface covered in moss or lichen. A sapling grew out of what was, at one time, a fireplace.

Something went _crunch_ under her shoe.

Cora looked down and moved her foot. She'd stepped on an old picture frame, breaking the mud-caked glass. Something pale peeked through the cracks.

She bent down and let her claws extend, using them to carefully pull the glass out of its frame. There was some kind of paper under the glass. Cora grabbed the edge and pulled it free.

It smelled like cow. Not paper, then. Parchment or something. It was about a foot square, and half of the page was covered in writing. A detailed illustration of a tree occupied the other half.

"Cora?"

Cora turned around and waved the parchment at Derek. "Look what I found!"

"Put that down, it's not yours."

"It is now." Cora peered at the parchment again. Some of the words looked familiar, but Cora couldn't understand any of it. "What language is this?"

Derek looked at the parchment, cocked his head to the side, and said, "I think it's Latin."

"Cool." She rolled up the parchment and tucked it into her sleeve. "I wonder what else is here."

"No. It's getting dark. _Please_ come home."

"Ugh, _fine_."

**o**

_smoke heat fire pain screaming dead dead they're all dead she's all alone—_

Cora comes to all at once.

The seatbelt cuts into her shoulder. Her ribs hurt from the steering wheel digging into them. The windshield's been shattered. The world outside it looks wrong, and it takes Cora a second to realize that this is because the car landed on its roof.

She hears people shouting, far above her.

Cora extends her claws and slashes through the seatbelt. It takes some twisting to crawl out of the broken window, and at the last second she remembers and reaches back through, snagging the strap of her backpack and pulling it out of the wrecked car.

Her breath mists in the air, but there's no snow. She's further south than she thought.

Someone shouts, much closer this time. Cora cranes her head back, ignoring the rush of nausea, and sees people moving around at the top of the cliff.

She slings the backpack over one shoulder and runs into the woods.

**o**

The offices of the Institute for the Study of Inscrutable Phenomena occupy an old red-brick tower in downtown Baltimore.

The building has a debatable number of floors and was designed by three consecutive architects, two of whom killed themselves before they could complete the project. When the Institute moved in, a few of its employees combed the building and put a sticky note on every window they could find. Afterward, they went outside to assess the results.

There were six windows with no sticky note on them.

First Assistant Lead Analyst Lydia Martin is not a tall woman, by any stretch of the imagination, but she discovered years ago that there are two major advantages to wearing high-heeled shoes. Not only do they increase her height by a considerable margin, but the noise they make on hardwood floors is also an excellent intimidation factor. The _clack-clack-clack_ of her stride as she walks to her office every morning is usually enough to dissuade anyone from bothering her.

Not today, however.

"Congressman Pollard called," Kyle says, jogging every few steps to keep up with Lydia. "He wants to know if it's absolutely necessary to learn the speech you sent him. Apparently he's been having some trouble with the pronunciation."

Lydia sighs. "The ceremonial greeting _has_ to be recited by any visiting official. It's traditional. The Court will be horrifically offended if he doesn't at least _try_. And we do_ not_ need a bunch of offended fairies on our hands." The _clack-clack-clack_ comes to an abrupt halt when Lydia spots the woman waiting outside her office. "Oh god, what's _she_ doing here?"

The woman's classically beautiful, wearing a pencil skirt, pumps, and stockings. It's impossible to look at her without the words 'sexy librarian' coming to mind.

Kyle looks at the woman, then back at Lydia. "Who's that?"

"Jennifer Blake," Lydia says, with no small amount of venom. "I gave her goddamn picture to security. Excuse me."

Blake smiles as Lydia stalks down the hall toward her. "Hello, Miss Martin," she says.

Lydia replies, "How did you even get in here?"

"A clipboard and a confident wave. Can I ask you a few questions?"

"No. Get out."

Blake crosses her arms. "You know, I wouldn't have to do this if the Institute's press office—"

"You're not press," Lydia snaps. "You blog about Mothman." She reaches for the doorknob.

Blake says, "Who's 'Deucalion,' Miss Martin?"

Lydia glares at the door. "Once I'm inside, I'm calling security. If you're smart, you'll be gone by the time they get here."

She pushes the door open and slams it shut behind her.

It's not a large office, but Lydia likes it. She doesn't have to walk through anyone else's office to get to it, and there's a window and just enough room for a couch.

A couch that, right now, contains a sleeping eighteen-year-old girl.

Lydia stands over the couch and clears her throat.

The girl startles awake, reaching for a knife under her pillow that isn't there. She blinks a few times, then says, "Hi, Lydia."

"Allison. Why are you sleeping in my office?"

"Because there's a Russian hitman waiting in my hotel room, and I _really_ don't want to deal with that right now."

Lydia settles into her chair, firing up her computer, and says, "More importantly, how did you get in here? Can _anybody_ walk into this building?"

"_Your security really sucks,"_ says a tinny voice from Allison's pocket.

Allison pats down her pockets, then reaches into her jacket and pulls out her phone. "Matt, I need you to send Lydia the photos from Atlanta."

"_Sure,"_ says the phone.

Lydia shakes her head. "Can't you use flash drives like a normal person?"

"Matt's faster. And more secure."

This time last year, Matt Daehler was a federal agent who could control machines with his brain. Then Allison shot him, and he wound up stuck as some kind of digital ghost.

It's not the weirdest thing Lydia had to deal with that year.

A folder appears on Lydia's desktop. Lydia dutifully opens it up and starts paging through the photos.

"These look like werewolf attacks," she says.

"Four of them," Allison agrees. "One a day, until two days ago, when they suddenly stopped."

The first twenty pictures or so are crime scene photos, probably stolen from the case files, but the next few—

"Did you sneak into the morgue to take these?"

"The autopsy guy doesn't get enough angles," Allison replies, a hint of annoyance in her voice.

Lydia keeps scrolling through. "This looks like way more damage than the other werewolf maulings I've seen."

Allison nods. "The coroner's report also said that victims two and three were missing organs."

"What does a werewolf need human organs for?"

"No idea."

Lydia closes the folder. "I think I need a second opinion."

"From who?"

"Our werewolf expert."

**o**

The day after Cora's tenth birthday, her mother knocked on her bedroom door and said, "Cora? Can we talk?"

Strictly speaking, it wasn't Cora's room anymore. Laura and Uncle Peter got their own bedrooms, since they were older. But Cora had to share with Sophie and Amber, and Derek was bunking with Max, because Uncle Teddy and Aunt Liz still hadn't moved out.

Cora kept the weird parchment with the Latin writing on it in a wooden box on her nightstand. She found the box in an antique store when she was out running errands with Dad, and he bought it for her as a birthday present.

The box, and the parchment, were the only things Cora had that were hers alone.

Mom sat on Amber's bed, facing Cora, and said, "You're starting school next month."

"I know," Cora said. All the werewolf kids were home-schooled until fifth grade. Until they were old enough to control themselves in public.

Every time Max came home bubbling with stories from school, Cora ran into the woods and stayed there for a few hours.

"The hunters don't go after children, usually," Mom said. "They have a Code."

"Yeah, I _know_," Cora said. "You told me all this already."

"What I didn't tell you is that some hunters don't follow the Code," Mom said. "Cora, if you're ever scared, or you think you might be in danger, you hide, okay? You hide from them, and you wait for us to come get you. Tell me you understand."

"Yeah," Cora said. "I understand."

**o**

A twig snaps underfoot. Cora wakes up.

She resists the urge to shrink further into the hollow she's been sleeping in; the sound and movement will just make her easier to find. Instead, she stays perfectly still, arms wrapped tightly around the backpack.

Outside, voices call to one another. The subtle, persistent noise of people trying to move silently through the forest filters down to her hiding spot.

A shadow passes over the gap of light next to Cora's head. A foot sidles into view.

Cora slows her breathing as much as she can, and waits.

Another call echoes through the trees. The man standing on top of Cora's hiding spot shouts back. After a second, the foot disappears.

She doesn't move until the voices fade away and the forest is utterly silent.

Cora wriggles out of her burrow and stands, stretching. Then she looks down at the backpack.

She can't be caught with it. She'll have to hide it.

**o**

Lydia's flight lands in Sacramento a little after 4 PM. Database Coordinator Stilinski, First Name Withheld for Reasons of Personal Dignity, is waiting for her at the Arrivals gate. He's holding a cardboard sign with 'PRINCESS LYDIA MARTIN' written on it in pink glitter. There are hearts and butterflies around it.

"You're the most embarrassing person I know," Lydia says.

Stiles grins. "Thanks. It was an honor just to be nominated." He grabs Lydia's bag and leads the way to the luggage carousel. "How have you been? I haven't seen you in _months_. I ran into your mom at the drugstore and she kept asking about you."

"I've been avoiding her," Lydia admits. "And my dad."

"What, are they fighting again? I thought getting divorced was supposed to fix that."

"Worse," Lydia says. "They're getting crazier the closer we get to my sister's wedding. Mom keeps sighing about how I'm not in a 'serious relationship,' and Dad's midlife crisis has hit critical mass. He's dating a twenty-year-old."

Stiles shudders. "God, that's creepy."

"I know."

"That girl is younger than you."

"I know!"

"I'm actually kind of flattered now," Stiles says. "You came all this way and braved your insane family, just to talk to me."

"Not you, actually," Lydia says. "Your boyfriend."

**o**

Lydia takes one look at the loft and says, "Oh, god."

"What?" Stiles says, mildly offended.

"Stiles, you live in a shitheap."

"The Beacon Hills Historical Society declared this building an Official Heritage Site, you know."

"It's still a shitheap."

"A _historical_ shitheap." Stiles walks over to the kitchenette and opens the fridge. "You want anything? Beer?"

Lydia settles onto the couch. "Water, thanks. _Not_ tap water."

"Yes, ma'am."

Lydia looks around. Stiles' laptop sits on the other end of the couch, all his papers and notes scattered across the coffee table. There's a nice view out the enormous, wall-to-ceiling window, but the place is still kind of a shitheap.

"Does anyone else even live in this building?" Lydia asks.

"There's Mrs. Motkova downstairs," says a voice from behind her, "but she's spending the winter in Phoenix."

Lydia doesn't jump and keeps her expression neutral, but Derek probably heard her heart rate jump. "Derek. How's the pack?"

"Somehow, they remain alive."

"Is Isaac home?"

"He's at Erica's." Derek Hale walks around the couch and sits in a chair across from her, perching on the edge, elbows on his knees.

Derek looks more at ease than the last time Lydia saw him. At some point between then and now, he grew what could be considered either a really short beard or really long designer stubble, and developed a fondness for sweaters. It's a far cry from the scowly angst-ridden leather-clad werewolf Lydia met last year.

Lydia pulls her tablet out of her bag, brings up the photos Allison sent her, and hands it to Derek. "Could you take a look at these for me?"

Most people would flinch when handed a tablet full of gruesome murder photos, but Derek just starts scrolling through. Considering that damn near his entire family died in a fire seven years ago, and Peter, his one surviving uncle, killed Laura, his one surviving sister, after which Derek was forced to rip Peter's heart out, he's probably desensitized by now.

Stiles hands Lydia a glass of water, then peeks over Derek's shoulder. "Yeesh. Werewolves?"

"We think so," Lydia says. "But there's a lot more trauma than usual. And missing organs."

Derek stops scrolling, turns to Stiles, and says, "How do I zoom in?"

Stiles grabs the tablet, fiddles with it, and hands it back.

Derek peers at the screen, moving the picture around a bit. "_Which_ organs?"

Lydia says, "Victim number two was missing most of his intestines, and victim three had no liver."

Derek looks up at Lydia. "He ate them."

"What?"

"Your mystery werewolf. He's eating his victims." He turns the tablet around and points to a huge wound in the victim's thigh. "See that? He grabbed a handful of meat and ripped it out with his claws."

Stiles says, "Does this happen often?"

"No," Derek says. "Preying on humans is a bad idea, for a lot of reasons."

Lydia takes the tablet back. "Interesting. Do you—"

This building is fairly close to the preserve, which means that when a single wolf's howl echoes through the forest, all of them hear it.

Derek leaps to his feet.

Stiles says, "Is that—?"

"Someone's calling for help," Derek says.

**o**

Cora arrived home from the last day of school before Christmas break to discover her bed was missing.

There was simply a gap between Sophie and Amber's beds, the floor where it had been slightly dustier than its surroundings. Her nightstand was missing, too.

Where her headboard should have been was a folded piece of paper with Cora's name on it. Cora picked it up and unfolded it. It said:

_Come to the attic._

And below that was a drawing of what Cora guessed was supposed to be a reindeer, but it looked more like a dog with a candelabra on its head.

This was probably Uncle Peter's doing. For April Fool's last year, he'd stolen every piece of furniture out of Laura's room and arranged it neatly on the roof. Cora rolled her eyes and headed for the dusty old staircase that led to the attic.

She would've gone and complained to Derek, but Derek had been really weird lately. He didn't come right home after school like he used to, and he snuck out of the house at night. And he never hung out with Cora anymore.

The dusty old staircase wasn't as dusty as expected. Somebody had tried to clean it up, although there was still one stubborn cobweb above the door to the attic. The web's resident sat right out in the open, regarding Cora with deep arachnid disdain. Cora ignored the spider, opened the door, and stared.

Someone had moved all the boxes and old furniture out. Her bed sat near the window, along with her nightstand and a thick, round rug. Laura and Derek sat on the bed, grinning smugly.

Cora said, "What."

Derek said, "Merry Christmas!"

Cora said, "_What_."

Laura said, "Crap, she doesn't like it. Okay, you grab the nightstand, I'll start moving the mattresses."

"Like what?" Cora said. "What's going on?"

"Well," Derek said, "Laura and I figured you should have your own room again, so we—"

Cora liked to think she was pretty quick on the uptake for an eleven-year-old, which was why she felt a surge of embarrassment once everything clicked into place. "This is my new room?"

"If you want it," Laura said. "It gets kind of cold up here, and there's this bird that keeps getting in, so if you don't we can move everything right back down."

"I love it," Cora blurted out. "I love it, I love it, oh my god—"

She ran up and tackled them both in a hug.

**o**

Cora's lungs burn. Her joints ache. The rain soaks her to the bone, and she can barely see. But she doesn't dare stop running.

Too late, she sees the figure hiding behind the tree ahead of her. He throws something in her face. Some kind of powder. Cora gasps and coughs. Tears stream down her face. She shoves the man aside and keeps running.

The urge claws its way up out of her throat again, even though it won't be any good. She knows where she is, now. There won't be anyone to answer her call.

There aren't any werewolves in Beacon Hills. Not anymore.

Cora gives in to instinct anyway. She throws her head back and howls.

**o**

The windshield wipers aren't doing much good. Lydia can barely see Derek's car ahead of her, and the forest on either side of the highway is a dark, indistinct blur.

There's another howl, loud and close, abruptly cut off.

Ahead of her, Derek's Camaro screeches to a halt. Lydia sees the brake lights just in time and slams down on the brake pedal.

The driver-side door of the Camaro opens, and Derek dashes into the woods.

Lydia fumbles with the seatbelt and leaps out of her car. She sees Stiles emerge from the Camaro and shouts, "What the hell was that?"

"No idea!" Stiles shouts back. "You packing?"

Lydia nods, realizes Stiles probably can't see it, and says, "Yeah!"

"Go after him!"

Lydia grabs her holster and follows the path Derek broke through the trees.

There's a commotion up ahead. Derek has someone by the neck, and slams him face-first into a tree. The guy drops. Derek keeps running. Lydia sprints to catch up with him.

They burst into a clearing. There's a girl on the ground, and a guy with a knife to her throat.

"Where is it?" the guy hisses. "Where'd you hide it?"

Derek snarls a challenge. His eyes glow red.

The guy's head snaps up. The hand holding the knife jerks—

Lydia draws her gun and puts two bullets in his chest.

The guy drops. Derek rushes forward, kneeling over the girl.

Lydia hears him say, in a shaking voice, "_Cora?_"

The girl's bleeding from the neck. Heavily. The knife slashed her jugular vein. Derek fumbles at her neck, trying to stop the bleeding.

Lydia says, "Derek, move."

He goes when she pushes him aside. Lydia yanks off her jacket, folds up the sleeve, presses it to the slash across the girl's neck and clamps down as hard as she can.

"What's her name?" Lydia says.

"Cora."

The girl's hyperventilating, choking on her own panic, her face pale. Lydia says, "Cora, you need to stay calm. You're gonna be okay. Just calm down. You're safe."

To Derek, she says, "Help me get her to the car."

**o**

"The wound healed, but she's lost a lot of blood," Stiles says, leading Lydia through the hospital's corridors. "Her doctor's having an existential crisis, and I don't think he'd believe me if I told him his mystery patient is a werewolf."

Lydia says, "Has she woken up yet?"

"Nope. And we don't know when she will. Or if."

"Who is she?"

"Cora Hale," Stiles says, and at Lydia's raised eyebrow, he adds, "Yeah, she's Derek's little sister. He had no idea she was even alive."

"Him and everyone else."

They reach the right room, and Stiles quietly nudges the door open.

Cora Hale is thin, the kind of thin that comes from eating irregularly and poorly. The hospital bed makes her seem even smaller. Her eyes are closed, her breathing slow and steady.

There's a stuffed chair in the corner of the room, the kind that looks comfortable but isn't. Derek's managed to fall asleep there, neck twisted at a painful angle and legs dangling over one of the chair's arms.

Stiles lets out an exasperated sigh and walks over to the chair.

Lydia nods at Derek and says, "How's he doing?"

"Not great," Stiles says. He reaches out and brushes some of Derek's hair away from his forehead; Derek stirs, but doesn't wake. "He's been here ever since we brought her in."

Lydia stands at the foot of the hospital bed and watches Cora for a while.

It's been seven years since the fire. Cora's eighteen now. She grew up, had a life of her own, and nobody knew.

Lydia murmurs, "Where _have_ you been, Cora Hale?"

**o**

"_We lost her,"_ says the voice over the phone. _"She's in Hale territory now. We can't—"_

The phone's owner ends the call and drops the phone onto the desk. "Useless."

"I'm not afraid of Hale," says a voice from across the desk. There's a low growl in it. "Let me go after her."

"Yes, I think that's for the best."

The scrape of a chair. A door opens.

"Make it messy," adds the figure behind the desk. "Remind everyone what happens to those who defy Deucalion."

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**Next: "Where The Heart Is"**


	2. Where The Heart Is

**Notes: **Wow, these chapters are way longer than I anticipated. Beta by Dusty, one of the few people who actually think I'm funny.

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**Chapter Two: "Where The Heart Is"**

Cora's alarm clock went off at 7:00, because she'd forgotten to turn it off. Cora slapped blindly at the clock until it shut up. It was cold in the attic, and the schools were closed that day for some teacher thing, so she burrowed under her covers and went back to sleep.

She woke up again when she started coughing.

Cora's room was filled with smoke. She tried to sit up, but couldn't; her body wouldn't obey her instructions.

There was a noise from the nightstand. Cora struggled to turn her head and saw the antique wooden box shaking, the lid straining against the latch. Like something inside was trying to get out.

Cora tried to sit up again. It was like there was a tremendous weight holding her down. Her fingers twitched.

She focused on that sensation. First she curled her fingers, then rotated her wrist. It was exhausting, and it _hurt_, and Cora could barely breathe.

After what seemed like forever, she flung her arm out. It landed on the nightstand. She reached for the box, fingers brushing the latch, crying from the effort.

Her fingernails caught the edge of the latch. Cora flipped it open.

The box's lid sprang up and back, and the parchment inside blew up into the air, as if carried by a breeze. It meandered, back and forth, and landed over Cora's nose and mouth.

Annoyed, Cora sat up and pulled the parchment off her face. Then she froze.

She'd sat up.

Cora swung her legs off the bed and stood. Whatever had been holding her down was gone.

She ran to the door. She hissed in pain when she grabbed the handle, and yanked her hand back. The doorknob was scalding hot.

The smoke was getting thicker. From downstairs came the roar of something burning. The house was on fire.

Cora coughed and turned, looking around the attic. She didn't dare try the door again. The only other way out was through the window.

She tested the latch. The window was supposed to open, but the frame had been painted so many times that it had been effectively sealed shut. Cora scratched at the seal with her claws, coughing, vision blurring.

Then she gave up and broke the glass.

It cut her as she climbed through. Cora lost her grip on the outside ledge and fell.

She landed hard on dry grass, and felt her ribs crack all along one side.

Cora screamed and pulled herself up to her knees. She heard voices from the other side of the house; voices she didn't recognize.

She was supposed to run. Hide. Wait for the pack to come find her.

Cora stumbled to her feet and sprinted into the woods.

Hours later, she realized she was still clutching the sheet of parchment.

**o**

Cora's eyes snap open. She gasps, but the air is clean, reeking of antiseptic. It's dark. There's something in Cora's arm, something sharp; she reaches over and yanks the IV needle out.

A hand touches her arm, and Cora snarls, lashing out. Her wrist is caught and held. Cora struggles against it, lets her fangs drop.

"Cora, it's okay!"

Cora goes very still. She knows that voice.

The lamp next to her bed switches on, revealing a face. Derek's face. Derek, if he'd lived, if he'd grown up and grown into his long, lanky body.

Cora says, "I'm still dreaming, aren't I?"

Derek pinches her arm.

"Ow!" She pulls her wrist out of Derek's hand and rubs the sore spot. Then what just happened catches up with her, and she shoves him back. "Get away from me!"

"Cora—"

"Don't," Cora snaps. "Don't even try it, there's a dozen different things that impersonate dead people. You can't fool me. What are you? An eidolon? A fetch?"

"Cora," the thing with Derek's face says, "You used to make me watch _The Goonies_ with you. We saw it over a dozen times and wore out Dad's old VHS copy. You knew every line off by heart."

Tears spring to Cora's eyes; she blinks them away. "Derek?"

"You wanted a fish tank but Mom said no, so Laura and I drove you to the Monterey Bay Aquarium for your eleventh birthday. You told me you were going to steal a baby shark and keep it in the bathtub."

"But you're dead," Cora says, voice shaking. "You're dead, everyone died, I'm the only one left—"

Derek edges forward. "Laura and I weren't home," he says, and he sounds like he's walking on broken glass, like it hurts to talk. "We had school that day. We weren't in the house."

"You didn't come find me!" Tears roll down Cora's face; she can't stop them anymore. "I did what I was supposed to, I hid, I waited, but nobody came to get me!"

Derek surges forward and wraps her up in a hug, squeezing so tight it almost hurts. "I'm sorry," he says. "Cora, I'm so sorry, I didn't know—"

Cora buries her face in his shoulder and, in a tiny, quiet voice, says, "Why didn't you come and get me?"

**o**

It's almost noon when Lydia opens the door to Cora's hospital room and says, "Hi."

"… Hi," Cora replies, sitting on the edge of the bed. She's dressed in the clothes she was wearing when they found her in the woods: jeans and a t-shirt. The shirt has a large, dark brown stain near the collar.

Lydia says, "You don't recognize me, do you?"

"… You're Lydia Martin, right? Derek said you saved my life."

Lydia approaches the bed and stands at its foot. "You're being discharged?"

"Yeah," Cora says. She watches Lydia carefully, but avoids eye contact. "There's nothing medically wrong with me, so…"

"Can I ask you a few questions, before you leave?"

Cora's eyebrows come down, but she says, "Sure, I guess."

Lydia nods. "You're aware that you're legally dead?"

"Derek told me," Cora says. "He said everyone thought I died in the fire." After a moment, she adds, "Why, though? I mean, my body wasn't—"

"Most of your family's bodies weren't intact," Lydia says. "The house partially collapsed as it burned, so the remains were scattered and damaged."

Cora doesn't flinch, or look at all unsettled. She's meeting Lydia's eyes now, genuinely interested in what she's saying.

Lydia continues, "In situations like that, sometimes the best the authorities can do is establish the minimum number of individuals present. In this case, eight. The body count was later updated to ten, when it looked like Peter Hale was the only survivor."

Cora's eyes narrow. "So they declared me dead because of… what? A guess?"

"An educated guess, based on who was known to have been in the house at the time."

"Well, they guessed wrong."

"Clearly," Lydia says. "What about the man who attacked you? Who was he?"

Cora shrugs. "A hunter."

It's a lie, or at least not the whole truth, but Lydia doesn't have the grounds to dispute it. The man she shot had no ID on him, his fingerprints and dental records turned up no results, and the guy whose face Derek broke managed to sneak away while Cora was being rushed to the hospital.

Lydia has a plane to catch. She'll have to worry about this later.

"Okay," Lydia says. "We're done. Thank you, Cora."

"Thanks," Cora says, as Lydia heads for the door. "For saving my life, I mean."

Lydia gives her a quick, close-lipped smile, says, "You're welcome," and leaves.

**o**

Derek pulls up outside his apartment building—it looks like a converted warehouse or factory or something—kills the engine, and then just… sits there, hands on the steering wheel. Cora undoes her seatbelt and waits.

Neither of them said anything the whole drive over. Cora doesn't really know where to start. 'How have you been' seems a little frivolous, under the circumstances.

"You can stay as long as you want," Derek finally says. "Right now there's just the couch, but if you want a bed, we can get one."

"Okay," Cora says, and isn't sure what to say next. "Thanks."

"Okay," Derek says. He nods like he's psyching himself up for something, undoes his seatbelt, and gets out of the car.

They ride the freight elevator up to the top floor, because it's the only elevator, and before Derek slides open the big metal door to his apartment, Cora catches the scent of another werewolf.

Scratch that; other _werewolves_. At least four. Derek has a pack.

Cora experiences a brief and confusing moment of anger, but it's gone before she can analyze it.

There's a guy sitting on the couch with a laptop, typing intently, and a kid—maybe sixteen or seventeen years old—in the kitchen, standing in front of the open fridge.

The guy says, "Isaac, quit doing that. The Food Fairy didn't visit in the five minutes since the last time you looked in the fridge." Then he looks up from the computer, sees Derek and Cora, and bounces up off the couch. "Hey. Hi."

"That's Stiles," Derek says, gesturing to the guy, and then nods at the kid in the kitchen. "And that's Isaac."

Isaac is taller than Derek, skinny, with tousled hair. He closes the fridge and says, "Can we order pizza?"

"Sure," Derek says. He turns to Cora. "Do you still hate mushrooms?"

"I'll eat anything," Cora says.

"Even spinach and feta?" Stiles says. "Because that's what Derek's getting. Because he's _weird_."

"Because it's delicious," Derek corrects. "And you're not in a position to judge. You still haven't shut up about that pirogi pizza you had in Canada."

"It was really good!"

Stiles appears to consist of at least 90% arms and legs. Cora sniffs; he's human. He seems harmless, but there's a look in his eyes that Cora doesn't like. She imagines it's what lab rats see when they look up at the man with the clipboard. Like Stiles is taking note of everything Cora says and does and filing it away for later.

Stiles says, "Derek, can I talk to you for a second?"

Derek nods, and Stiles meets him in the corner of the room, near the spiral staircase up to the second floor. Isaac fiddles with his phone, obviously eavesdropping, so Cora feels less guilty about doing the same.

"Do you think Cora would be more comfortable if me and Isaac weren't here?" Stiles says, voice low. "Because we can ditch if you need us to."

"It's fine," Derek says.

"Are you sure?"

Derek steps closer, reaches out to brush the fingers of one hand against Stiles' arm. "I want you to stay. Please."

"Okay."

Isaac says, "Stiles, are you gonna order?"

"Nope," Stiles says, walking around Derek to the kitchen. "Your idea, your phone call."

Stiles and Isaac start bickering, the kind of low-grade persistent bicker that has clearly been going on for a long time and always picks up exactly where it left off. Derek sits next to Cora on the couch.

It's familiar, but it isn't.

Derek says, "I've been trying to find a way to ask…"

"You want to know where I've been for the last seven years."

"Yeah," Derek says with a sigh. "I understand if you don't want to talk about it."

Cora stares at the floor, trying to sum it all up in a way that Derek will accept. "I've been… traveling. I never really stayed in one place for long."

**o**

Cora had no idea what to do.

Mom had told her to hide and wait for the pack to come get her. She hadn't told Cora what to do if the pack was _gone_. Maybe she would've, once Cora was older.

Cora ran east, then south. She avoided the roads and towns, although sometimes she had to sneak in close enough to steal food or clothes. The trees eventually petered out and disappeared, leaving nothing but rocks, grass, and sky. It got too cold to sleep out in the open at night.

Cora hid in the shadow of a rock and watched the barn carefully. It was a little too close to the house; if the animals inside made too much noise, she'd be found out. But it was getting late, and Cora had no idea how far it was to the next ranch.

The wind shifted, bringing with it the smell of cow. Cows were good. Some of them didn't like wolves very much, but most were too stupid to see her as a threat.

Cora crept across the field, keeping low to the ground. She found a gap between the barn's wall and floor just large enough to wriggle through, and the dark, musty warmth of the barn washed over her.

After a second, Cora's eyes adjusted to the dark. She cocked her head to the side. There was a bed in here, and a little nightstand with a lamp on it. The bed's occupant was slightly too big for it.

The bed-covers stirred. The shape of a head emerged, and large, wet eyes blinked slowly at Cora in the darkness. There was a snort, followed by an inhale.

The whatever-it-was sprang from the bed, landing on two feet. It was much, much bigger than Cora. A terrified bellow echoed through the barn.

Cora scrambled back to the hole in the wall, squeezed through, and ran. She didn't know what direction she was going in; all she knew was that she had to get _away_.

She tripped, fell, and looked up into the muzzle of a shotgun.

The woman on the other side of the gun snapped, "Don't move!"

"I'm sorry!" Cora blurted out, on reflex.

The woman fumbled in her pocket, retrieving a flashlight. Cora squinted in the blinding light.

"Jesus," the woman said, lowering the shotgun. "You're just a kid. What the hell are you doing out here?"

**o**

Cora opens her eyes and, for a few seconds, has no idea where she is. There's a rough pillow under her cheek. Cora leans up onto her elbow and looks down.

Derek's asleep on the floor next to the couch, another of the couch's throw pillows under his head. At some point, somebody draped a blanket over him.

From the kitchen, Cora hears Isaac say, "I don't think it's supposed to look like that."

Stiles stands in front of the stove, doing something with a frying pan, and Isaac leans against the counter a few feet away. Cora carefully steps over Derek and walks to the kitchen. "What are you doing?"

Stiles glances over his shoulder and says, "Experiments in food."

"It's supposed to be French toast," Isaac says.

"Experiment failed."

There's a dull _thump_, and the contents of the frying pan burst into flame.

Calmly, Stiles says, "Baking soda." Isaac hands it over, and Stiles dumps it onto the grease fire.

Isaac says, "I'll go take the battery out of the smoke detector. Again."

Cora hears a sharp intake of breath from behind her.

Derek's still asleep, but his brow is furrowed and his claws are out. His breathing speeds up.

Stiles says, "Crap," and walks around the kitchen island toward the couch. He kneels next to Derek, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Derek?"

Cora takes another look at Derek's claws. "Hey, maybe you shouldn't—"

Derek's eyes fly open. His hand closes around Stiles' arm, but the claws don't break skin. He blinks a few times and says, "Stiles?"

"Morning, big guy," Stiles says. "Can I have my arm back?"

Derek looks down at his hand, then back at Stiles' face. He lets go. "Sorry. I was dreaming."

"My fault," Stiles says. "I set the frying pan on fire."

"Again?"

Stiles rolls his eyes. "You're all so fucking critical. Yes, _again_. Fortune favors the bold."

"Fortune doesn't favor your cooking skills." Derek sits up, and he notices Cora standing by the island. "Hey."

"Hey," Cora says, and because she doesn't know what to say next: "Can I use your shower?"

"Yeah, of course," Derek says.

"I might also need to borrow some clothes."

"Erica keeps some of hers here," Isaac says. Then he looks at Cora, and adds, "Uh… they may not fit."

**o**

The conference room isn't big enough to comfortably seat all the Institute staff who wound up attending this briefing. Lydia arrived early and grabbed one of the comfy chairs at the table; when she checks over her shoulder, there are at least three people sitting in the alcove where they keep the coffee machine.

Rebecca Harlowe—she prefers 'Harley,' for reasons Lydia has never been able to fathom—stands up at the front of the room, next to the projector screen. She's considered the Institute's best field agent, although Harley would be the first to deny that.

Harley says, "Okay, let's get started before even more people show up." She hits a button on her remote, and a photo appears on the screen.

It's a wide shot of the interior of a church. The photographer had been standing up at the pulpit, facing the congregation, such as it was.

The pews are filled with dead bodies, seated upright, heads bowed.

"This was the first incident," Harley says. "A Baptist church in Mississippi. Over fifty victims, found in the morning when the minister arrived to get ready for Sunday service."

The next photo is of one of the victims sitting in the pews. His throat was slit, and his hands lie in his lap, holding a Bible.

"All of the bodies were positioned like this post-mortem. The victims were apparently selected at random from the town's populace. Half of them didn't even attend that church."

The next slide is a picture of a note, written on thick white card stock, in red-brown ink:

_Insurrection is the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties._

"This was nailed to the front door," Harley says. "That's blood, by the way. It's written in human blood."

The next slide shows the back of the card. Written in looping, elegant cursive is a single name: 'Deucalion.'

"The rest are more of the same." Harley clicks through a series of photos: a meat locker hung with human corpses, a tree with mutilated bodies strapped to every bough, an enormous pyre made out of human bones. All ridiculously over-the-top set-pieces of blood and death. "There have been five, so far. At each site, another note was left."

"More Lafayette quotes?" Lydia guesses.

"Not quite," Harley says. "But each of them has something to do with revolution or rebellion."

From the back of the room, Kyle says, "This 'Deucalion' can't be just one guy. That's a lot of bodies to move around, for one thing."

Harley says, "Right now we're operating under the assumption that Deucalion is the mastermind, and he's got followers to do the heavy lifting."

Director Jason Heidingsfeld, the boss of everyone in this room, asks, "_Why_, though? If the victims are random, what's Deucalion's motive to kill them? And why arrange the bodies like this?"

Greenberg says, "I dunno, because that's what the voices in his head are telling him to do?"

Harley shakes her head. "I don't think anyone can be that unstable and still be functional enough to not get caught. All the crime scenes are _spotless_. No fingerprints, no DNA, fibers… nothing."

Lydia stares at the screen, index finger tapping against her lips. On it is a photo of the latest incident: dozens of bodies found in the Arizona desert, arranged side-by-side in concentric circles. There's a pale square at the center of the circle that's probably the note.

"It's theater," she says.

Harley says, "What?"

"The murders aren't the point," Lydia says. "They're just a way to draw attention to the notes."

"… Because elaborate, gruesome mass murder is the most effective way to get on the national news," Harley says.

"Exactly. Deucalion's trying to send a message. These killings are a call to arms."

**o**

The store is tiny. Cora can't help but feel a little claustrophobic.

And Erica… Erica is _loud_. Everything about her is loud. She's the perfect, platonic ideal of the blonde bombshell, to which all other blonde bombshells can only aspire. Cora can see why Erica's clothes wouldn't fit her. Especially in the hips. And chest.

"Just grab anything you like," Erica says, draping another top over her own arm. "Don't worry about the price tag. It's all going on Derek's credit card."

"I just need shirts and pants," Cora insists.

"There's no reason why they can't be _nice_ shirts and pants."

"Okay, I get why _you're_ helping me pick out clothes," Cora says, then points at the wannabe male model behind her. "But what's _he_ doing here?"

"Because Jackson actually knows things about fashion," Erica says, "whereas my favorite color is leopard print."

"It's true," Jackson says. "Erica's outfits only look good because she's the one wearing them."

Erica grins. "Aww, thanks."

"That was supposed to be an insult."

"I'm taking it as a compliment and you can't stop me."

Cora recognizes both of them, in a manner of speaking; their scents were all over Derek's apartment. They're werewolves.

She spots Derek on the other side of the glass storefront, standing in the middle of the mall corridor, hands in his pockets.

Erica glances at Cora, then sees what she's looking at. "Oh, god damn it, Derek,"

Jackson says. "He's going to get arrested again."

Cora says, "Derek got arrested?"

"Twice," Erica says brightly, as if this is never, ever going to be dethroned as her favorite thing to tell people. She turns her attention back to Cora and says, "Bras! You'll need bras. What size are you?"

Cora hesitates for a moment. "… 32A? I think?"

Jackson and Erica both look at her face, then lower. Cora resists the urge to cross her arms over her chest.

"I don't think that's right," Jackson says.

"We'll get you fitted," says Erica. "Go try some of this stuff on, then we'll head over to the Macy's."

Cora glances out the window again. She doesn't really mind that Derek's out there. A part of her is still convinced he'll disappear if she looks away for too long.

**o**

The ranch belonged to a woman named Zoe, and her daughter's name was Hannah. Hannah was Cora's age, and she was a minotaur.

She was about a head taller than Zoe, who Cora guessed was just under six feet. Hannah's limbs were long and spindly, like a calf's; her horns weren't much more than stubs, and her ears were huge and a little floppy.

Zoe dropped a big cardboard box on the floor and opened it. "I've still got some of my daughters' clothes from when they were little," she said. Cora looked at Hannah, sitting at the end of the couch with her knees and ankles together, hands on her lap, trying to take up as little space as possible. Zoe amended, "My older daughters. They're human."

"Oh," Cora said.

"Here," said Zoe, extracting a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt and handing them to Cora. "Go change into these. Bathroom's down the hall."

The bathroom was small, with a claw-footed bathtub and colorful, mismatched towels. The toothbrush holder was shaped like a frog. Cora closed the bathroom door and stared at herself in the mirror.

Her hair was matted. Her face was covered in dirt, and there were dark circles under her eyes. She looked like someone else.

Cora's eyes burned. She sniffled and blinked the tears away.

There was a knock on the door. Cora jumped.

"Yeah?" she said.

"Mom wants to know if you can drink milk," Hannah said.

"Uh… yes?"

"Cool." The sound of hooves on hardwood receded.

Cora shrugged into the new clothes and didn't know what to do with her old ones, so she carried them in her arms as she walked back down the hall.

Zoe and Hannah were in the kitchen. Zoe placed a mug of hot chocolate on the table. "Here. The mix might be a little stale. I prefer tea, and Hannah can't have chocolate."

"I can take those," Hannah said, nodding to the clothes in Cora's arms. Cora handed them over, then reached back in to pull the sheet of parchment out of her hoodie's pocket. It was creased and a little tattered, but Cora got the feeling worse things had happened to it.

Hannah disappeared down the stairs. Cora, feeling a little lost, sat down at the table and stared at the mug of hot chocolate.

"You can stay here tonight," Zoe said. "We've got a spare room. Who should I call?"

Cora said, "What?"

"Who should I call to come get you?" Zoe clarified. "Your parents?"

"I… there's nobody to call," Cora said. "They're all gone."

It was the first time she said it out loud.

**o**

The restaurant is called 'Barb and Ernie's,' and looks like it should be made out of gingerbread. There's a wooden statue of a man wearing lederhosen next to the front door. Lydia enters warily, expecting to be assaulted with accordion music once she opens the door, but the radio's been set to an Oldies station. Thank god.

Lydia approaches the bar and badges the middle-aged woman behind it. "I need to talk to your friend in the cellar."

Nervously, the woman says, "You're not gonna upset him, are you? Because the last time he got upset, it took a week to clean everything up."

"I'm a friend of his," Lydia says. "It's fine."

The woman nods, although she still looks wary. "Down the hall, second door on the left."

Lydia descends into the beer cellar. It's dark and cool down here, and remarkably clean. Somebody just dusted, from the looks of it.

"Biersal?" she says.

A brown tabby cat leaps up onto a barrel, watching Lydia expectantly.

Lydia says, "Nice place."

The cat says, "It's a little on-the-nose, but I'll take what I can get."

"They paying you well?"

"One jug of beer a day," Biersal says proudly. "But you didn't come here to catch up."

"Nope," Lydia says. "Does the name 'Deucalion' ring any bells for you?"

Biersal's tail thrashes. The hair all along his back rises.

Lydia says, "I'll take that as a yes."

"You're here about those murders, aren't you?"

"We figure they're being used to send a message," Lydia says. "What I need to know is, who's receiving it?"

Biersal shifts uncomfortably. "The Queen is ill. They say she's dying. The Court is falling apart. And now there's rumors that this 'Deucalion' is building an army."

"What do you know about Deucalion?" Lydia asks. "Has anyone met him?"

Biersal shakes his head. "He's got supporters, but nobody knows who they are. It's all shadowy meetings and secret codes. Sorry."

"What's he building this army for?"

"Word is, he's going to overthrow the humans." Biersal unsheathes his claws, kneading the wood of the barrel. "Make everything like it was."

"'Like it was'?" Lydia says. "You mean the kidnappings? The Wild Hunts?"

"Not just that," Biersal says. "He doesn't just want to bring the Court back, he wants to bring _everything_ back. All of us who hide in the dark. He says he's going to lead us back to our 'rightful place.'"

"Do you think he can do it?"

Biersal says, "I think if he tries, a lot of people are gonna die."

**o**

Cora's been stuck in this mall for hours now. The noise and crowds and shitty music are _really_ starting to get on her nerves.

At least it's not as bad as Hong Kong. She is _never_ going back to Hong Kong.

Cora spots Derek again, sitting on a bench with another werewolf. She abandons Erica and Jackson so she can weave through the crowd towards him.

As soon as she's close enough, Derek says, slightly worried, "Are you okay?"

"Hi," says the guy next to Derek, who seems to have been constructed on a slightly larger scale than everyone else. He's probably a teenager, but also probably doesn't get carded at bars. "I'm Boyd."

"Hi," Cora says, then turns back to Derek. "Are you avoiding me?"

From behind her, Erica says, "If he is, he sucks at it."

Boyd raises an eyebrow at Derek, who nods. Standing, Boyd says, "Come on, guys. Time to go."

He herds Jackson and Erica away, despite Erica's protests of, "But we've got all her stuff—!"

Once they're gone, Derek says, "I'm not avoiding you."

"You dumped me on your pack and lurked in dark corners all afternoon," Cora snaps. "What do you call that?"

"I'm—I don't want you to—I'm trying to give you space."

"_I don't want space!_"

A few feet away, a little kid starts whispering frantically to his mother. A few passersby give Derek and Cora considering looks and swerve to avoid them by a wide margin.

"I'm sorry," Derek says, so quiet Cora can barely hear him. "I don't know how this is supposed to work."

"Neither do I," Cora admits. She chews her lip. "… Can I see the house?"

**o**

What's left of the Hale house is ash-gray and black. The front of the house still stands, but the back is little more than a pile of broken wood. It sits atop the hill and seems to leech all color and life from the forest around it.

Cora stares at it through the windshield for a long time, then gets out of Derek's car and walks up the hill.

Derek follows her at a distance, hands in his jacket pockets. He doesn't say anything as Cora climbs up onto the porch and peers through the broken window.

Cora says, "Is it safe to go inside?"

"Not really," Derek says. "The living room and the dining room are stable, but nothing else."

Cora nudges the door open. The stairs up to the second floor are still intact, but she probably shouldn't risk climbing them.

"You said Peter survived?"

"He was in the basement," Derek says. "I think he was trying to reach the tunnels."

There's something in his voice that sounds like guilt. Cora can't quite figure it out.

"There was some kind of spell," Cora says. "It felt like something was holding me down."

Derek nods. "Stiles thinks Kate might have used a Hand of Glory. It's a—"

"The severed hand of a hanged man, made into a candle," Cora interrupts. "It unlocks all the doors in a house and paralyzes everyone inside." She backtracks through what Derek said. "Who's Kate?"

"Kate Argent," Derek says, like there's a hand around his throat.

Argents. Werewolf hunters. Mom and Grandma warned all the kids about them, but they always felt more like fairy tales than an actual threat.

"Peter was burned," Derek says. "Badly. He was catatonic after the fire. We had to put him in a nursing home."

"And then he killed Laura."

Derek swallows. "Yeah. Last year. And then I killed him."

"Did you want to?"

"I thought I did," Derek says. "Until I actually did it."

Cora should probably feel something, but she doesn't. She already grieved for Peter and Laura. Knowing they died a year ago, and not seven, doesn't change much.

Derek starts to say, "Did you—" and cuts himself off.

"What?"

"I know you said you never settled anywhere, but…" Derek meets her eyes. "Did you ever find another pack?"

**o**

Cora stayed with Zoe and Hannah for two weeks. Sometimes she couldn't sleep, so she snuck out to see Hannah.

"Why do you sleep in the barn?" she asked one night, as she and Hannah sat on the bed. "There's enough room in the house."

"Barely," Hannah replied. "And soon there won't be. I'm still growing. And I break stuff." Hannah's ears flicked back. She looked down at her hands. "I knocked Mom's favorite snow globe off a shelf last year. Dad gave it to her. Mom said it was okay, but…"

"But you could tell she wasn't," Cora said.

"Yeah. So I decided to stay out here. I still go in the house sometimes, but I have to be really careful."

Cora didn't know it was the last night she'd ever spend at the ranch, the night she snuck into the barn and whispered, "Hannah? You awake?"

"No," Hannah mumbled. Then she sat up and sighed, "Yes."

Cora crept to the bed and turned on the lamp. Hannah burrowed back under the covers and said, "Read to me?"

Hannah could read, but her eyes weren't very good. Book print was too small for her to see. Cora pawed around under the nightstand until she found the book, Hannah's favorite, then sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed.

"'All children, except one, grow up,'" she read. "'They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old—'"

Cora was interrupted by a long, mournful howl, coming from a long way off. After a moment came a second, answering howl.

Hannah sat up, ears flat against her head. "Wolves?"

"No," Cora said. "Werewolves."

* * *

**Next: "Bête Noire"**


	3. Bête Noire

**Notes:** I somehow managed to write this chapter while I was in the process of moving to a different country. Also, Dusty beta'd this and it's thanks to her suggestions that this chapter is a thousand words longer than it used to be.

* * *

**Chapter Three: "Bête Noire"**

Cora knew what she'd heard. There was another pack out there.

"Are you sure?" Zoe said, sitting across from Cora at the kitchen table. Her hands were wrapped tightly around a half-empty mug of tea, its contents gone cold. "It might just be a pack of wolves. We get them around here."

Cora shook her head. "It's werewolves. At least two of them. I can tell."

"And you think they'd take you in?"

"Their pack would be stronger with me in it," Cora said. "They'd want me with them."

She didn't know that for sure. Cora had never met any other packs, or any Alpha who wasn't her grandmother, although a few visited Beacon Hills before she was born. But the silence was awful, pressing in around her late at night, almost suffocating. Last night's distant howls had tugged at something deep in her chest.

"Okay," Zoe said. She stood and dumped the rest of the tea into the sink. "I'll take you to them."

"You shouldn't," Cora said, hopping down off her chair. "They might run away if I'm with a human."

Zoe crossed her arms. There was a firm set to her jaw. "I'm not going to let you wander off alone."

"They aren't far," Cora said. "I won't be alone for long. Promise."

They stood like that in silence, until Zoe's shoulders slumped. "Okay. When do you want to leave?"

Cora swallowed, suddenly nervous. "Tonight?"

Zoe packed up clothes and food for her, as well as some camping supplies. "If you ever need help," she said, handing Cora a surprisingly heavy backpack, "You call me, okay? I'll come running. Hannah, too."

When Cora went to the barn to say goodbye, Hannah said, "Here," and shoved a book into her hands.

Cora turned it over. It was Hannah's copy of _Peter Pan_: old and dog-eared, the spine creased in a dozen places, the cover frayed around the edges.

"But this is your favorite," Cora said.

Hannah shrugged. "I can always get another one. And I want you to remember me."

"I won't have _any_ trouble remembering you," Cora said, and winced. "That came out wrong."

Hannah laughed. "Just take it, you dork."

Cora started to tuck the book into her hoodie's front pocket, but there was already something in there. She took out the folded-up piece of parchment, stuck it under the book's cover, and slid the book into her pocket.

She left as the sun began to set.

**o**

Lydia doesn't sleep more than twenty minutes at a time, so her apartment mostly serves as a convenient location to shower, eat, store clothes, and—very infrequently—entertain company. It's on the 'fourteenth' floor of a newish high-rise.

(Somebody involved in the design and construction of the building was clearly a little superstitious).

She emerges from her post-work shower to find Allison sitting in the living room, idly flipping through one of Lydia's enormous coffee table books. Lydia likes coffee table books; they add a touch of class and, in an emergency, can be used as weapons.

"How did you get in here?" Lydia asks. "And don't say you climbed through the window, because we're thirteen floors up and I don't have a balcony."

"The security guy let me in," Allison says.

Lydia raises an eyebrow. Allison points to the pizza box sitting on the coffee table.

"It's a good thing you aren't trying to kill me," Lydia says. "Is there actually a pizza in that box?"

"Nope."

Lydia lets out a little sigh through her nose, then turns and walks over to the kitchen, opening the fridge. There's nothing inside, of course. She hasn't bought groceries in ages.

Allison says, "You should probably get dressed."

"I just got off work."

"You _never_ get off work," Allison points out. "Do you remember our man-eating werewolf?"

Lydia closes the fridge and turns around. "What about him?" She can guess what the answer is.

"He's back," Allison says. "There's been another murder."

**o**

The first thing that filters in as Cora wakes up is the sound of typing.

Stiles sits curled up in the chair across from her, computer on his lap. The surface of the coffee table is barely visible under all the papers scattered across it. Stiles doesn't appear to have noticed she's awake; he turns away from his laptop to consult a tablet before setting it back on the arm of the chair.

Cora shuffles until she's kind-of-sort-of sitting up and rubs her eyes. She's slept in less comfortable places, but the couch isn't exactly a feather bed.

"Hey," Stiles says, looking up briefly from the computer. "Derek went out for a run. He'll be back in a bit."

"... Okay," Cora says, after an awkward few seconds. "Thanks."

"No problem," Stiles says, eyes fixed on the computer again.

Cora shoves the blankets off her legs and puts her feet on the floor. The papers on the coffee table draw her attention; some of them are hand-written notes, and others look like photocopies of old books. She leans over to get a better look at one of them: there's a woodcut of a werewolf, and beneath that a few lines of text in Middle English.

"Derek said you work for the government," Cora says. As conversational openers go, it isn't great, but Cora figures it's more polite than asking, 'Who the fuck are you, anyway?'

"Yeah," Stiles replies, still typing. "I'm with the Institute for the Study of Inscrutable Phenomena." He glances up and adds, "I know, it's a pretty bad name. Most people just call it 'the Institute.'"

"And your job at this Institute involves researching werewolves."

"Researching everything, really," Stiles replies. "It's a little boring compared to fieldwork, but there's less driving, no sleeping in motels, no shootouts, no running after things, no running _away_ from things…"

A splash of red catches Cora's eye, dragging her gaze toward a short stack of photos half-hidden under the other papers. Cora reaches for them.

Stiles sees her move and leans forward, the computer tipping precariously out of his lap. "Hey, those are from an open case—"

Cora's pulse ratchets up. She stares down at the photos: they're of a young man, dead, meat ripped off his body in huge swathes.

"Ennis," she breathes.

**o**

The howls came from the south, so that's where Cora went.

The ground became rockier, the farms fewer and further between. Cora wasn't sure how much time had passed since she left the ranch, but it was fully dark and the stars were out.

Cora tipped her head back and howled.

After a few seconds she got a reply, a single howl. She waited for the second, but it never came. Cora hooked her thumbs through the straps of her backpack and began to walk in the other werewolf's direction.

She climbed down into a gorge formed by an old, shallow creek, and followed the water downstream. It wasn't long before a man stepped out from behind a rock ahead of her.

The man was pretty young, although all adults seemed ancient to Cora, and he was huge. Cora had thought her dad was the biggest person who ever lived, but this guy could have dwarfed Dad easily. He smelled like a werewolf, and like blood.

"Hi," she said. "My name's Cora."

"Ennis," the man said in a flat tone. "Aren't you a little young to be wandering away from your pack?"

Cora said, "I don't have a pack."

Ennis stared at her for a while, then nodded. His expression didn't change. "My camp's down the stream," he said, and then he turned and walked away.

Cora followed him. She wanted to ask how big his pack was, if this was their territory, but she wasn't sure if she was allowed. Cora had never joined another pack before. She didn't want to do it wrong.

The gorge widened out, the creek running straight through a natural basin in the rock. To Cora's left was a small campfire, burned down to embers. There wasn't much more to the camp than that.

Someone lay in the water, face up. Another werewolf.

The water downstream ran red. The werewolf's belly had been slashed, entrails steaming in the air. His ribs were broken and splayed open to reveal what was left of his lungs and heart. Chunks of flesh were missing from his flanks and legs.

Cora stumbled back, breathing out a tiny, choked scream.

Ennis turned to face her. His fangs dropped. His eyes glowed red.

Cora turned tail and ran away as fast as she could.

**o**

There's a thin layer of snow on the ground, just enough to make everything slushy and miserable. Lydia carefully picks her way down the path, grateful she decided to wear flats today. The crime scene is in the woods, inaccessible by car.

A few officers are still poking around when Lydia arrives, and one of them stops her. "This is a crime scene, ma'am."

"I know." Lydia says, and shows him her badge. "I need to have a look around."

The officer squints at the badge and its unfamiliar insignia. "You're not FBI?"

"Nope. This case may be tied to something else I've been investigating. That's all."

The officer nods. "Okay. But make it quick, and don't touch anything."

Lydia ducks under the tape and scans the area.

The trees are all bare this time of year, except for a few conifers here and there. The body's already been taken away, but it had been found under a rock overhang, in this secluded little clearing. If Lydia didn't know the highway was a few hundred yards away, she'd think she was in the middle of nowhere.

There's still blood everywhere, staining the leaf litter and rock and slush. Whatever happened to the victim, it happened here.

"FBI already came by," the officer says. "They're the ones who insisted we declare this a crime scene. Press all over the place, too. There was this really persistent reporter, can't remember her name…"

"Blake?" Lydia suggests.

"Yeah, I think that was it."

"Don't talk to Blake." Lydia sticks her hands in her pockets to warm them up. It's dead silent out here. No birds.

"Seems like a lot of fuss, for an animal attack." The officer's not talking to Lydia, exactly. Just voicing his concerns in her general direction. In all likelihood, the other officers in the area have already smiled and nodded their way through his grousing, and now he's taking advantage of a fresh audience.

"There was a nearly identical attack yesterday," Lydia says. "About two hundred miles east of here."

"So the animal's moving west," the officer says.

Lydia learned ages ago not to argue with people who aren't actually listening to her. "Yes," she mutters. "I suppose it is."

**o**

"His name's Ennis," Cora says. "He's an Alpha."

The crime scene photos lie spread across the kitchen counter. Derek stands over them, still in his workout clothes, hands braced on the counter's edge. His fingers tap restlessly on the countertop. Stiles perches on a stool next to him, scribbling in a notebook.

Stiles says, "And Ennis eats people."

"Yeah," Cora says. "And other werewolves."

Derek's head snaps up. He's gone pale. "Oh, god."

Stiles stops writing and looks at Derek, then Cora. "I'm missing something here, aren't I?"

"Alphas can become more powerful by eating their own packs," Derek says, rushing, stumbling over his words a little. "But an Alpha would have to be absolutely desperate before they'd even consider it."

"Ennis isn't desperate," Cora says. "And he didn't stop with his own pack."

Stiles says, "More powerful _how_? Also, why?"

"It's a survival tactic," Derek says. "Like an animal eating her young. If the pack's under threat, if they're about to be wiped out, then eating the pack gives the Alpha the strength to escape and start over." Derek looks up and meets Cora's eyes. "That's not what Ennis is doing, though."

"No," Cora says. "He's not doing this to survive. He's doing it because he can."

"He came after you?"

Cora nods. There's still a flutter of fear in her gut, even years later. "I ran into him a little while after the fire."

Derek exhales loudly through his nose and looks down at the photos again. His heart rate's up; he's angry, or scared. Cora wonders for a second what might have happened if Derek had been there when Ennis attacked her. Eleven-year-old Cora had believed her big brother could save her from the monster, but eighteen-year-old Cora knows Ennis would've killed him easily.

Stiles glances at Derek out the corner of his eye and puts a hand on the back of Derek's neck, stroking his thumb across Derek's hairline. Derek seems to relax, a little, and Stiles picks up the pen again.

It's weird to be the focus of Stiles' attention, and a little unnerving. He says, "How many werewolves has this guy eaten?"

Cora shrugs. "Hard to say."

"But he's been at this for at least six, seven years?"

"Yeah."

Stiles turns to Derek. "How much extra strength are we talking, here?"

**o**

Cora hadn't run far when a weight hit her from behind. Something latched onto the backpack and dragged her along the ground. Half-shifted from fear, Cora slashed through the straps and scrambled up the rock wall, out of the gorge.

She made the mistake of looking back.

Cora had seen a fully-shifted Alpha once, when Grandma needed to scare off a bear that wandered too close to the town. Grandma didn't look all that scary when she shifted; to Cora, she'd just looked like a big, weirdly-shaped wolf.

Fully shifted, Ennis looked like something out of a nightmare. His fur was the ruddy brown of dried blood, patchy in spots, over piles of muscle. His teeth seemed too big to fit in his mouth. He reared up on his hind legs and slashed at her with long, sharp claws.

Cora jumped back and sprinted away over open ground.

There was a line of trees a few hundred yards away, a windbreak around a farm field. Cora aimed for it, zigzagging across the intervening ground. From behind her came the sound of Ennis' thundering gallop, steadily getting louder.

She dove into the tree cover and stayed low, scurrying through the underbrush. Ennis crashed through the trees behind her. He was too big to weave through them.

Cora followed the trees until they abruptly ended, and she was forced to dash across the highway. A car swerved and just narrowly avoided hitting her. Delirious with adrenaline, Cora kept running.

Until she tripped and fell.

Cora lost her balance and tumbled downhill. She frantically scratched at the dirt with her claws, trying to stop, but when a rock struck her on the side of the head she tucked into a ball, whimpering, and waited to hit the bottom of the ridge.

It seemed to take forever. Eventually she rolled to a stop and slowly uncurled.

When she opened her eyes, all she could see was Ennis' fangs. His breath washed over her face, thick with the scent of meat and blood.

A noise ripped through the air: a high, piercing whine.

Cora yelped and curled up, covering her head again. Ennis bellowed, ears pinned flat against his head.

**o**

The sun is low in the sky when Lydia arrives at a motel roughly two hundred miles west of the latest werewolf attack.

Lydia checks her phone and frowns at the screen. There's almost no internet coverage out here. She pockets the phone and heads for the office.

She isn't working from much more than a hunch. But if her werewolf is moving west, he might stay at this motel tonight. He could even be here already.

There's nobody behind the desk. Lydia rings the bell, although 'ring' might be stretching it; all the bell does is let out a dull _clank_. The rattle of its impact on the counter is louder. She waits, but a minute later she's still the only person in the room.

She coughs, as loud as she can.

A head pokes around the edge of the door to the back room. A bored-looking man—maybe in his late twenties—emerges. He leans heavily on the counter and says, "What?"

Lydia badges him, and gets a little satisfaction from the resulting change in the guy's expression. She says, "I need a list of any guests who've arrived within the last day."

"It'll be a short list," the guy says. "It's just the one dude. Showed up this morning."

"Is he still here?"

"Yep."

Lydia glances over her shoulder. "Which car is his?"

"No car," the guy says.

"And you didn't think that was a little weird?"

"Lady, I work at a crap motel in the middle of nowhere. I've seen a lot of weird shit."

"Fair enough," Lydia says. "What's the room number?"

**o**

Lydia knocks on the door to Room 26 and waits. When there's no answer, she knocks again, louder.

She's halfway through the third knock when the door opens with a sudden yank and the man behind it says, "The sign says 'Do Not Disturb.'"

Lydia has to tilt her head back to look him in the eye, although her instincts scream not to bare her throat to this guy.

She says, "Mr. Evans?"

"What?"

"The motel register says this room's occupant is a Mr. John Evans."

"I know," the man growls. "What do you want?"

Lydia flashes her badge. "My name's Lydia Martin. I work for the government. I'm just checking up on all recent arrivals as part of a routine inquiry. Can I ask you a few questions?"

The guy says, "Do you have a warrant?"

"No."

"Am I being detained?"

"No."

"Then no, you can't."

The door closes in Lydia's face.

"Charming," Lydia mutters.

**o**

Shortly after Stiles finished picking Cora's brain, he returned to his laptop and the noise-canceling headphones came out. Stiles has barely moved since.

Cora finds herself at loose ends. She wanders around the loft; the spiral staircase leads up to a second floor, with three bedrooms and a bathroom. One room smells like Isaac, another smells like Derek and Stiles.

The third bedroom doesn't have anything in it but bookshelves. It looks like it's been converted into a kind of library, only more cramped and less organized.

Cora approaches the shelves. She never spent much time in her family's library when she was little, but she recognizes some of the books, although they're a little more battered now.

Others she doesn't recognize at all. One bookcase is almost entirely devoted to a collection that consists of crappy spiral-bound print shop books sitting cheek-by-jowl with antique tomes and beat-up paperbacks. All of them have titles like _The Significance of the Dragon in Chinese Myth_ and _The Translated Diaries of Fortunato Andry_.

"Those are Stiles'," Derek says, from behind her. He's showered, and he changed into jeans and a t-shirt. "He needs them for work."

"You mean he doesn't read this stuff for fun?"

"Nope," Derek says, and points to a different shelf. It's filled with more crappy paperbacks, only these have titles like _The Land of Terror_ and _Master of Death_. "That's what these are for." There's a little disdain in his voice.

Cora can't help but ask, "Are you still a closeted book snob?"

It surprises Derek into a laugh. Cora hasn't heard him actually laugh since she was eleven.

When they get downstairs, Stiles still hasn't moved. If it weren't for the rapid movement of his fingers and the steady rattle of the keyboard, Cora would be tempted to put a mirror under his nose and check that he's still breathing.

"Come on," Derek says, nodding towards the door. "He'll probably be out of it until he finishes his report. Let's grab some food."

On the elevator ride down, Cora asks, "Does he do this a lot?"

"Every once in a while," Derek says. "Sometimes he'll fall behind and work for twelve hours at a time."

A little while later, as she's climbing into Derek's car, Cora says, "How'd you meet him?"

Derek pauses in the process of starting the car. "He arrested me."

Cora's eyebrows rise.

"It was right after Laura died," Derek continues. "Stiles was investigating her murder. There was a misunderstanding."

"Which obviously got cleared up," Cora says.

"Yeah, eventually," Derek says. "Back then… I was so angry, and so _alone_, but Stiles kept dragging me out of my own head." Quietly, he adds, "I'd probably be dead, if it weren't for him."

Derek starts the car and pulls out of the driveway. A few minutes pass in silence.

Cora says, "I can't believe you're having sex with someone who willingly goes by 'Stiles.'"

Derek huffs a laugh. "His given name is worse."

"How _much_ worse?"

"It's mostly consonants and I can't pronounce it."

"Wow." Cora drums her fingers on her thigh. "… Do you trust him?"

Derek swallows. "Yeah," he says. "With my life. With everything."

"Okay," Cora says. "Good."

**o**

The noise kept going; there was no end, no pause, just a persistent, screeching, ululating wail. It felt like Cora's brain was splitting in half.

She curled up as tightly as she could. She heard Ennis snarl and howl, felt him stagger away, and then there was one last growl and he was gone.

The noise went on for a while, and stopped with an abrupt _squeak_.

Cora stayed curled up and didn't move. If she was about to die, she didn't want to see it happening.

Something poked her in the small of the back. Cora flinched away, and the whatever-it-was nudged her again, harder.

Then it kicked her between the shoulders. Cora snarled and lashed out, swiping blindly with her claws.

A girl—maybe Laura's age, maybe older—jumped back and yelled, "Whoa, easy!"

Cora rose into a low crouch, on all fours. There was something tucked under the girl's arm, a stomach-shaped cloth bag with pipes sticking out of it. She didn't have any weapons. She didn't smell like a werewolf.

The girl edged closer. "I'm not gonna hurt you."

Cora glanced up the hill. The car that had almost hit her sat at the top, the door open. It was still running.

She stood, slowly, watching the girl the whole time.

"Hi," the girl said, finally coming within range of Cora's claws. She stuck out a hand. "My name's Braeden."

**o**

The motel room smells like cigarette smoke and cheap, ineffective air freshener, but it's directly across the parking lot from Room 26. Lydia draws the curtains, leaving a gap just large enough to peek through, and settles in for a long wait.

She still has no cellular internet, and the motel Wi-Fi is spotty at best.

A little after 8:00, the door to Room 26 opens. Its occupant steps outside, closes the door quietly behind him, and circles around behind the building.

Lydia follows, double-checking her sidearm and stun gun. The stun gun isn't standard issue. Lydia modified it, giving it a bit more juice and installing a mechanism that allows the trigger to lock into place.

Near the back door to the office, she finds a pile of clothes—the clothes 'John Evans' had been wearing—and a splash of blood. Not enough blood lost to be instantly lethal. Droplets trail off into the treeline, and Lydia follows them.

She finds her quarry in a clearing, bent over the desk clerk. Lydia can see the clerk's face: he's pale, gasping, clutching at his neck. His attacker must have hit him in the throat so he couldn't call for help.

Lydia draws the stun gun and shouts, "John Evans! Step away and get down on the ground!"

The werewolf growls and turns around.

He's an Alpha, fully shifted. Lydia has just enough time to register the raised hackles, bared fangs, and the dull, sick glow behind those red eyes before he lunges at her.

Lydia pulls the trigger.

The shock probes hit the werewolf square in the throat. He tries to snarl, but can't get the air. One huge paw wraps around the wires and pulls, yanking the probes out of his skin and the stun gun out of Lydia's hands.

That stun gun should've had enough charge to drop even an Alpha.

On reflex, Lydia draws her sidearm and fires a couple of rounds directly into the werewolf's face, then runs as he bellows in pain.

Lydia bursts out of the trees and darts around the corner of the building, sprinting for her car. It's dead ahead, but the werewolf is gaining. She feels his breath on the back of her neck.

She dodges to the right. The werewolf's claws skid on the asphalt, and Lydia hears a _crunch_ as he slams into the side of her car. She ducks into her motel room, locking the door behind her. A moment later, it shudders as the werewolf throws his weight against it. She only has a few seconds; less, if the werewolf figures out it'll be quicker to come through the window.

She backs up, scanning the room. There's nothing in here she can use, just the bed, the TV, the microwave—

The microwave.

Lydia grabs her spare magazine off her belt. Her fingers shake a little as she thumbs the bullets out of the magazine and into the palm of her other hand. She figures she's allowed.

She wrenches the microwave's door open, tosses the bullets inside, and closes it again. She sets the microwave for an hour on high.

Then she runs into the bathroom, slams the door closed, and jumps into the bathtub, pressed as closely to the floor of the tub as she can get.

She hears the window shatter, and the werewolf's low growl, and the rising, crackling hum of the microwave.

The bullets go off with a noise like Satan's firecrackers.

The werewolf howls, angry and pained, and then there's only silence.

Lydia doesn't move for a long while. She waits, listening for a footstep or a breath that would betray the werewolf's presence.

It's only when she hears sirens that Lydia emerges from the bathroom.

A breeze comes through the shattered window, ruffling the curtains. The door to the microwave blew open. It's slightly on fire. There are bullet holes in the walls.

The werewolf is nowhere in sight.

**o**

The local police are a little miffed about the state of the motel room, and even more miffed when Lydia answers all their questions with, "Classified information, sorry."

The paramedics parked Lydia on the curb, before turning their attention to the motel clerk. Lydia obediently stays there—she's comfortable mouthing off to cops, but she doesn't dare disobey medics—and fiddles with her phone in an attempt to get a decent Wi-Fi connection.

In her peripheral vision, she sees one of the paramedics approach.

"I'm fine, really," Lydia says, eyes still fixed on her phone. "I'm not even in shock. I'm sure you have more important things to take care of."

"Not really, no," Allison says.

Lydia looks up. Allison's dressed in a medic's uniform, hair twisted up into a bun.

"Seriously?" Lydia says. "Please tell me there isn't a real paramedic lying naked in a ditch somewhere."

"It's a spare uniform," Allison says. "What happened?"

Lydia glances around; all the cops are busy and too far away to eavesdrop. "I found our man-eating werewolf." Her inbox finally syncs; she has one new e-mail from Stiles. "How's the victim?"

"Slashed hamstrings," Allison says. "He may or may not walk again, but he'll live."

Lydia skims the e-mail. "Well, this would have been useful earlier. Our werewolf's name is 'Ennis.' And he's been eating other werewolves, which makes him stronger. Explains why the stun gun didn't work."

"It was a good hunch," Allison says, probably attempting to reassure her.

Lydia sighs and closes the e-mail. "I'll have to try again at the next town."

"I don't think you'll have much luck," Allison says. "Ennis will be more careful from now on."

Lydia raises an eyebrow. "He didn't seem particularly clever."

"But he's never been caught. Which means he's smart enough to know you're onto him."

Lydia groans and pockets her phone. "You're probably right."

"Any idea where he's headed?"

Lydia shakes her head. "All I know is, he's headed west."

* * *

**Next: "The Wandering Nobody"**


	4. The Wandering Nobody

**Notes:** Not dead. Ha. Thank you to Dusty for the beta.

Chapter warning for minor character suicide.

* * *

**Chapter Four: "The Wandering Nobody"**

The elevator doors open to reveal Kyle, waiting with a phone in his hand. "Lydia!"

Lydia ducks around him and into the hall. "How long have you been standing there?"

Kyle keeps pace with her. "What time is it?"

"9:04."

"Six minutes. Also, you're late."

"Traffic," Lydia says. "What do you want?"

"Congressman Pollard's assistant called again."

"This can't wait five minutes?"

They turn the corner. Harley's waiting in front of Lydia's office door with her arms crossed; she looks unamused.

Lydia pinches the bridge of her nose and keeps walking. "Oh god, what now?"

Harley says, "My workstation got moved."

Lydia pushes her office door open. "Yeah, and?"

"And I have no idea where it went."

Lydia drops her bag on her desk, shrugs out of her coat, and says, "You should've received an e-mail with your new office number."

"Yeah, well, I can't check my e-mail," Harley says, following her in. "On account of the fact that I don't know where my computer is."

"Use your phone!"

"I can't! The e-mail app stopped working two weeks ago!"

"Uh, Lydia?" Kyle interrupts. "Congressman Pollard?"

Lydia drops into her chair and fires up her computer. "What does he want now?"

"He's supposed to meet with that Court envoy this morning, but his driver can't find the place."

"And he called _us_?" Lydia logs into her e-mail and scrolls through until she finds a message from Kelly, the facilities manager. "Harley, you're in 314."

"Thanks," Harley says, and walks out.

Kyle says, "Congressman Pollard's assistant says the address we gave her does not, strictly speaking, exist."

"The building's enchanted," Lydia says. "Which is why we sent him a primrose boutonniere last night. It's his own damn fault he's not wearing it."

"I'll, uh... I'll tell him to go back and get it."

"You do that."

Kyle scurries off, leaving Lydia in blissful silence.

Another message comes in while she's sorting through the morning e-mail backlog. Lydia reads it, feels her lips press into a thin line, gets up, and marches down the hall to the director's office.

"Morning," Heidingsfeld says when Lydia appears in his doorway. "Whatever it is, can it wait 'til I've finished my coffee?"

"Probably not," Lydia says. "I just heard from Baltimore PD. Deucalion's left another message."

**o**

Cora tucks the burner phone into her back pocket and climbs the ladder up to the roof. It's just after dawn, a chill hanging in the air, and Cora's pretty sure she's the only one awake. Once she's up, she sits on the edge of an air conditioning vent and pulls out the phone.

She dials Braeden's last number from memory. The call doesn't connect; it goes straight to a robotic voice, who informs Cora that the number's not in service. Her next call is to 411, and after that she dials the number of what is hopefully the right hospital.

"Hi," she says, as soon as it picks up. "I'm looking for Barbara Hart, I think she was admitted to your hospital?"

"Just a moment," the woman on the other end says. "... I'm sorry, we don't have any patients currently admitted under that name."

"She was there about a month ago," Cora says. She chews her thumbnail. "Was she discharged? Or—did she die?"

"I can't disclose information like that without a warrant," the woman says.

"What about—is there anyone there named 'Braeden'? First or last name."

"I'm sorry, miss. I can't help you."

"Please," Cora blurts out. "Please, I just need _something_. I need to know if she's alive."

"If your friend is missing, you should contact the police," the woman says. "Is there anything else I can help you with?"

"... No," Cora says. "Thank you."

She hangs up.

**o**

Traffic becomes impassable three blocks from the crime scene. Lydia parks down a side street and walks the rest of the way.

The building is an old textile factory, abandoned years ago. Most of the cops on-site have been tasked with keeping the crowd at bay. People press at the barricade from all angles: photographers, TV crews, and hordes of gawkers with their phones out, hoping to catch a glimpse of the latest horror show.

Some might call it the decline of civilization, but Lydia's keenly aware of the fact that civilization has always been like this.

She finds one officer guarding the back entrance, and he's talking to Jennifer Blake.

Blake spots Lydia and says, "Ms. Martin! Good to see you. If you're here, I guess that confirms my suspicions."

"Nobody is confirming anything," Lydia says, stalking down the alley toward the officer, who she regards with a flat, unamused expression. "What did you tell her?"

"Nothing!" the officer says hastily. "We were just talking."

"Don't." Lydia turns her attention back to Blake. "I'm going to ask once, and after that you'll be forcibly removed: please leave."

"Since you asked so nicely." Blake turns on her heel and strides away, tossing one last, "See you around, Tom," over her shoulder.

Lydia turns to the officer. "You're 'Tom,' I take it?"

"We really were just talking," Tom says.

"Don't talk to Blake. She's my nemesis." Lydia shows him her badge. "I need to get inside."

Tom says, "The FBI are on their way. We're not supposed to let anyone disturb the scene before they get here."

"Then I won't disturb anything," Lydia says. "I just need to look around."

Tom looks pained. He's young, probably fresh out of the academy. And he either has a strong constitution, or he hasn't seen the crime scene yet.

Lydia adds, "If anyone gives you a hard time, have them call the Institute and complain at us, instead."

Tom sighs, and nods. "Okay. Fine."

At first glance, the inside of the factory seems normal. Rusted-out, unused equipment fills the space, and graffiti covers the walls.

Then Lydia looks up.

Bodies hang from the ceiling, suspended horizontally by some kind of thin wire. The victims' limbs are tied to those of the bodies around them, forming a pattern: a web, or maybe a snowflake.

A single wire dangles from the center of the pattern, and at the end hangs a pale card, shockingly bright against the gray and brown background of the factory.

The floor's been cleaned; no dirt to disturb, no footprints to accidentally obscure. Lydia approaches the card. It hangs just above eye level for her, probably directly at eye level for someone taller.

She pulls a pen out of her pocket, nudges the card so it spins around, and reads:

_The tree of Liberty is watered with the blood of Tyrants._

**o**

The mall is absolutely packed this time of day, after the schools let out. Despite how busy the GameStop is, the guy who works here manages to find the time to approach Cora and Erica and say, "Do you ladies need any help?"

"Nope, we're good," Erica says, with a kind of aggressive friendliness that has the guy scurrying for shelter behind the desk. "I hate it here," she mutters, as soon as he's out of earshot. "They always think I'm shopping for my boyfriend or something."

Cora says, "Then why come here at all?"

"Because the only other place to buy games in this town is that independent place off main street, and the guy who works there doesn't shower." Erica picks up a green case and flips it over so she can read the back. "Have you heard anything about _Sleeping Dogs_?"

"No."

Erica hems and haws for a few more minutes before giving up. They leave without buying anything and escape to the relative quiet of the coffee shop.

Once they've settled into a couple of chairs in the corner, Cora asks, "Why are we doing this?"

"Getting coffee?"

"Hanging out," Cora says. "I mean, you seem like a nice enough person, but we don't really have anything in common."

Erica sighs and settles back in her chair. "Derek wants us to be friends."

Cora blinks. "He told you that?"

"No, I figured it out from the awkward way he asked me to take you shopping. It was painful to watch."

"_Why_ does Derek want us to be friends?"

"Because he likes me and he likes you and he wants us to like each other?" Erica shrugs. "I used to have a huge crush on him, you know."

Cora's nose wrinkles slightly. "Why do I need to know that?"

"Because I'm trying to explain something," Erica says. "So. Derek comes along, does his whole 'Supernatural Bad Boy' thing, bites me on the abdomen, so of _course_ I develop a Thing for him, right? But Derek didn't see it that way at all. He always treated me like his little sister. Like there was this empty space in his life and I got slotted into it by default."

Cora raises an eyebrow.

"Not that I think he was trying to replace you or anything," Erica says, rushed. "I just think... maybe he was trying to get back what he had. How he used to live. And now you're here, so..." She makes a vague gesture with the hand that isn't holding her coffee cup. "Who knows what goes on inside that guy's head?"

Cora mulls it over. She figured out a while ago that the Derek she knows now isn't the Derek she knew when she was a kid. The fire changed him just as much as it changed her.

"Anyway, I'd like to be friends with you," Erica says. "Maybe not besties, but you seem cool."

"Just so you know," Cora replies, "I don't think any of my friendships have ever been built on shopping and coffee dates."

**o**

The motel room was in a state of chaos. A couple of bras had been draped over the TV to dry.

Braeden dropped her cloth-and-pipes contraption onto the bed and began unscrewing the pipes, placing them in a flat plastic case. "Bagpipes," she said, when she noticed Cora staring. "Werewolves can't stand them. I always keep a set handy, just in case."

Cora said, "Are you a hunter?"

"Nope," Braeden said. Cora wasn't too good at telling whether somebody was lying, but it sounded like the truth. "I'm just a traveler." She pointed to the phone on the nightstand. "I know you said you don't have a pack, but do you need to call anyone?"

Cora nodded and reached for the phone, figuring she should call Zoe. Something else on the nightstand caught her eye.

It was a book, or at least the cover of one, about a foot square. It looked slightly deflated, since it contained about half as many pages as it was supposed to. The cover was made of wood, bleached and worn smooth with age, although there were hints of letters that had been carved into its surface.

Cora reached for the book and opened it. The pages were made of parchment; they'd been ripped out and carefully, painstakingly stitched back in, each and every one of them hand-written in Latin.

"What is this?" Cora said.

Braeden snapped the instrument case shut. "That? It's a spellbook. A long time ago, somebody ripped out the pages and scattered them all over the world. I've been trying to find them all."

"Why?"

Braeden raised an eyebrow. "Are you kidding? Pages of an ancient grimoire scattered across the face of the Earth? How could anyone resist that?"

Cora reached into the pocket of her hoodie and pulled out Hannah's copy of _Peter Pan_. The folded-up piece of parchment didn't quite fit inside; the edges stuck out. Cora extracted the page and unfolded it.

The writing on the parchment matched the writing inside the book.

"Oh," Braeden said. "Oh, wow. Where'd you find that?"

Cora frowned. "This doesn't make any sense. What are the chances—?"

"Pretty good, actually," Braeden said. "Like calls to like. The Codex _wants_ to be restored." She reached for the parchment in Cora's hands, then paused. "Can I—?"

Cora's fingers tightened around the parchment. "You said you're a traveler."

"That's right," Braeden said.

"Where are you going?"

"Right now? South."

"Far away from here?"

"That's the plan."

Cora nodded. "You can have this," she said, offering Braeden the piece of parchment, "as long as I can come with you."

**o**

There's nobody in the living room when Cora walks into the loft, but she can hear Derek and Stiles' voices coming from upstairs. She follows the noise to the spare-room-turned-library, where it looks like a pipe factory exploded. Screws, bolts, scraps of cardboard, and bits of metal litter the floor, and there's a thin, plastic-wrapped mattress propped up against one of the bookshelves.

Derek and Stiles sit on the floor in the midst of it all. Stiles holds up a piece of metal and says, "What _is_ this? This wasn't in the instructions."

"Put it in the 'maybe' pile," Derek says.

Cora says, "What are you _doing_?"

Derek says, "Contemplating violence against the person responsible for IKEA."

"It's a futon," Stiles says. He glares at the mess on the floor. "Or, it will be. Eventually. We're working on it."

Derek looks up at her. "I figured you might be more comfortable sleeping in here than on the couch."

"Oh," Cora says. "... Thanks."

Stiles says, "Wait, I think this piece might be upside-down. Where'd you leave the hex key?"

Derek hands over a tiny, useless-looking metal stick and, to Cora, says, "How'd it go with Erica?"

His voice is full of barely-concealed hope, so Cora shrugs and says, "It went okay."

Stiles, still wrestling with a snarl of black metal pipe, says, "We should've just bought a normal bed."

"There's no way we could've gotten it up the stairs," Derek says.

"That's your fault. You're the one who leased an apartment with a spiral staircase."

Derek says, "By the way, the whole pack is coming over tomorrow night for Erica's birthday. Stiles and I won't be here."

Cora says, "Why not?"

"Horny Werewolf Day," Stiles says brightly.

"What?"

"Valentine's Day," Derek says, slightly embarrassed, although Cora can't tell whether he's embarrassed for himself for for Stiles. "Is that okay? If you're not comfortable with the pack being here, I can tell them to go to Jackson's instead."

"No, it's fine," Cora says. "You guys don't seem like the Valentine's Day type, is all."

"This may or may not surprise you," Stiles says, "but your brother is an enormous sap."

"Thanks," Derek says flatly. "That was really romantic."

"I think you're sitting on the bag of screws. Hand them over, would you?"

**o**

The lab is almost impossible to find, hidden in the depths of a government office building where the labyrinthine corridors are regularly painted beige with a hose. Lydia finally locates the right door and knocks.

After a second, the door opens a crack and a young woman in a lab coat says, "Yeah?"

"Hi, I'm Lydia Martin. We spoke on the phone."

"Yeah, hi," the woman says, opening the door fully. "You're that analyst lady."

"That's... not technically my job title, but yes." Lydia closes the door behind her. The lab is clean, because forensics labs have to be, but it's also cluttered. And cramped. Painfully so.

"Caitlin!" shouts another woman, nearly invisible behind her workstation. "The centrifuge is making that noise again!"

"Smack it!" Caitlin shouts back. To Lydia, she says, "That's Emily. Em! Come out here and pretend to be a person for five minutes!"

Emily looks about twelve years old; she's wearing a t-shirt under her lab coat that reads, 'One does not simply Telnet into Mordor.' She carefully picks her way over to Caitlin's bench and says, "You're here about the Flesh Snowflake, right?"

Lydia makes a face. "Is that really what we're calling it?"

"It's pretty evocative, you have to admit," Caitlin says.

"Fine," Lydia says, resigned. "Do you have anything yet?"

"Not really," Caitlin says. "Although the FBI didn't send us that much evidence to work with in the first place. The scene was spotless. Like the others."

"What about the victims?"

"M.E.'s still working on them," Emily says. "Cause of death for the first few was cardiac arrest. Probably from the same stuff the government uses for lethal injections."

Caitlin says, "I've got a buddy at the FBI who says the victims were mostly gas station attendants, bartenders... night shift workers. Anybody who wouldn't be missed until it was too late."

Lydia spots an evidence bag sitting on the edge of a workbench. "Is that the note?"

"Yep," Emily says, grabbing the bag and handing it over. "Paraphrase of a Thomas Jefferson quote. Doesn't really match the display, though."

"You sound annoyed," Lydia says.

Emily shrugs. "If it were me, I would've used this quote for the third scene. You know, the one with all the bodies strapped to a tree?"

"We tested the blood from the note," Caitlin says, perching on a stool in front of her laptop. "It's from one of the victims. Mixed with blood thinners and an anticoagulant so it could be used as ink."

"And that's it?" Lydia says.

"Well, we found a fingerprint on the card," Caitlin says. "I'm running it now, but considering how careful Deucalion's been in the past, I don't think—" An alert appears on the screen. "—oh, holy shit."

"You have a result," Lydia guesses.

"A match to a driver's license thumbprint," Caitlin says. "'Lionel Stapleton.' California license, but it's expired."

Lydia peers at the screen. "Criminal record?"

"Doesn't look like it."

Emily holds up her phone. "Google says there's a 'Lionel Stapleton' in Baltimore. Owns a bookstore."

"It's worth checking out," Lydia says. "Thanks."

**o**

Erica and Boyd arrive first. Boyd's carrying a big flatscreen television under one arm.

"Derek doesn't have a TV," Boyd says, by way of explanation.

Cora decides not to comment and steps aside so they can enter.

Erica says, "Derek and Stiles already left?"

"Yeah," Cora says. "Derek said to tell you he has his phone with him, and you should try not to do anything that'll get him evicted."

Erica rolls her eyes and drops her backpack next to the couch. There's a heavy _thud_ when it hits the floor. "We're staying in all night and werewolves can't get drunk. What kind of trouble could we possibly get into?"

"Don't say that once Isaac and Jackson get here," Boyd says. "They'll take it as a challenge."

"Okay, good point."

Cora says, "Where are they?"

Boyd sets the TV down on the coffee table and says, "Lacrosse practice. They'll be here in a few minutes."

Erica opens her backpack, pulls out an Xbox, and then wrestles with the tangle of cables that fills the remainder of the bag.

"So your plan for your birthday is to stay in and play video games all night?" Cora asks.

"Yep," Erica says, loudly popping the 'P.' "I can't play games at home. My mom thinks I'm still epileptic."

There's a courtesy knock on the door before it slides open. Jackson and Isaac walk in; Jackson immediately heads to the fridge, retrieving one of Stiles' weird grapefruit craft beers.

"That's Stiles' beer," Cora points out.

"I know," Jackson replies, popping the cap off with a claw.

Isaac helps Erica disentangle the cords. Between the three of them (Jackson stays in the kitchen with his pilfered beer), they get the whole system hooked up, although some extension cords are needed to reach the outlet in the wall.

It isn't long before Erica, Isaac, and Jackson end up clustered around the TV. Erica and Isaac perpetually yell at the game, at each other, and, occasionally, at Jackson. Cora perches on a stool in the kitchen, watching them.

They're _kids_. The bite may have matured them a little, made them more aware of the world around them, but they're still just teenagers, in high school.

Cora wonders what was going through Derek's head when he picked them.

She wonders if she'd be just like them right now, if the fire hadn't happened.

"Hey," Boyd says, startling Cora out of her thoughts. He drops his phone on the counter. "Food's on the way. You like Chinese?"

"Sure," Cora says.

"Cool." Boyd leans on the counter next to her, observing with faint amusement as Erica reaches across Isaac to shove Jackson's controller out of his hands.

Cora says, "Did Derek ask you to do this?"

"Do what?"

"Babysit me. Hang out with me so I wouldn't feel left out."

"Nope," Boyd says. "Erica told me how your playdate went."

There's an involuntary smile on Cora's face when she says, "'Playdate'?"

"What? That's what it was, really."

Cora shakes her head and scratches at the countertop with a fingernail. "Erica thinks Derek wants us to be friends."

"He wants you to be a part of the pack," Boyd says. "I think he's worried you'll get sick of him and leave."

"Really?" Cora says, turning to face Boyd. "He thinks I'd do that?"

Boyd shrugs. "Derek's kind of messed up. He's getting better, but I think he'll always be a little messed up."

The shouting match in front of the TV kicks up a few decibels in volume.

Boyd says, "_Are_ you gonna leave?"

"... I don't know," Cora says. "I want to stay. But I'm not sure I can."

She expects Boyd to ask what she means by that, but all he does is nod and turn his attention back to the others. They settle into comfortable, easy silence.

**o**

Braeden and Cora's hotel in Bogotá wasn't very nice. The neighbors on the left wouldn't stop blasting some kind of Botswanan heavy metal, and the neighbors on the right had decided to partake in some particularly vigorous—and noisy—rhythmic cuddling. Which meant that the sound of Braeden vomiting into the toilet was, in the grand scheme of things, little more than white noise.

Cora knocked on the bathroom door. When it opened a crack, she passed a bottle of water through the gap.

"Thanks," Braeden croaked. The door closed again.

There was a long string of gulping noises, and then more retching. Once it stopped, Braeden groaned, "I think this is the worst hangover ever experienced by anyone."

"When you told me we needed to steal all those drugs," Cora said, sitting on the floor with her back against the wall, "I didn't think you were going to take them all at once."

"Shamanism. Don't try it at home. Oh, god." Another round of retching.

"Did you at least get what you needed?"

"Yeah," Braeden said. "The pages are in the family mausoleum. Hope you're okay with grave robbery."

Cora shrugged. There was a soft _thump_ from behind the door.

"Ooh, this floor is nice and cool," Braeden said.

"Are you hungry? I could make you some eggs."

"Ugh, please don't. Just leave me here to die."

Cora tipped her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. It'd been a long night for her, too. She paused, did some mental math, and realized what day it was.

"My birthday's tomorrow," Cora said.

"Really?" Braeden said, voice muffled by the fact that her face was probably still smushed against the floor. "Huh. So you're turning... thirteen, right?"

"Yeah."

"You're officially a teenager," Braeden said. "You wanna do something?"

Cora said, "I saw a really nice bakery on our way into town."

"Cool," Braeden said. "We'll get you a cake." Something scuffled against the floor, and then there was another _thump_ as Braeden collapsed again. "Provided I don't die."

**o**

A bell rings when Lydia steps through the door, and after a few seconds someone in the depths of the bookshop yells, "Just a minute!"

The shop is nearly identical to every other rare bookseller that Lydia's had the pleasure to visit: cat-infested, vaguely claustrophobic, and just dusty enough that that shop has 'character' without being a major health risk. Lydia's always wondered how they do that. Maybe they skim off the top layer of dust when it gets too thick.

A man with graying hair and a well-trimmed, nearly white beard emerges and makes his way to the front desk. He has one pair of glasses perched on his nose, and a second pair hanging on a lanyard around his neck.

"Hi," the man says. "What can I do for you?"

Lydia says, "Are you Lionel Stapleton?"

"That's me. What do you need?"

Lydia flashes her badge. "My name's Lydia Martin."

"You're a detective?"

"Intelligence analyst." Lydia glances out the window. "Can we talk somewhere more private?"

"Sure." Stapleton smiles, but it's a deliberate, stiff gesture. He leads Lydia toward the back of the shop, into the office.

There's a glass-fronted bookcase in here, the doors padlocked shut. Lydia peers through the glass, reading some of the titles. "Have you ever lived in California, Mr. Stapleton?"

"I went to college there and ended up staying," Stapleton says. "But I moved back to Baltimore few years ago. Can I get you anything? A drink?"

"I'll pass," Lydia says. "What kind of customers do you get in here?"

Stapleton's desk is up against the wall; he spins his desk chair around to face Lydia and settles into it. "Collectors, academics... the occasional student, although they can't afford most of my stock. Why do you ask?"

"Well, considering you've got one of the original copies of Andry's _Bestiary _back here, along with quite a few other rare occult books, I figured some interesting characters must come by."

Stapleton grips the arms of his chair and goes very still.

Lydia adds, "How long have you been working for Deucalion?"

Stapleton's throat bobs. "I don't—"

"Your thumbprint was found at yesterday's crime scene. I know because the FBI knows, and they're probably on their way here now." Lydia takes a step forward. "You're better off talking to me than to them. I'll actually believe you."

Stapleton lurches out of his chair and towards the workbench on the other side of the room. "He—one of Deucalion's people came to see me, a few months ago. Looking for a book. She told me about the cause. It seemed—it seemed _right_."

"So you helped them kill dozens of people," Lydia says, hand drifting to the holster concealed under her coat.

Stapleton leans on the workbench, head hanging low between his shoulders. "The world's gone wrong. We have to fix it. You understand that, don't you?"

"This book," Lydia says. "Did you find it?"

"No," Stapleton replies. "It might not even exist. And if it did, it was destroyed years ago."

Cautiously, Lydia approaches him. "I need you to come with me. If you tell us what you know about Deucalion, we can protect you."

Stapleton lifts his head and stares at Lydia over his shoulder. "Why would I need protection? I'm not afraid of him. I'm not afraid of anything, anymore."

His hand darts out, fingers wrapping around the box cutter on the workbench. Lydia draws her gun, but he doesn't come for her.

In one smooth motion, Stapleton draws the blade across his own throat.

**o**

"He _what_?" Allison says.

Lydia continues to pace circles around her coffee table. "Believe me, I'm just as surprised as you are."

"You couldn't stop him or anything?"

"There wasn't any _time_," Lydia snaps. "I wasn't even expecting Stapleton to go for the knife. The guy looked like a skinnier, nerdier Santa."

The downstairs neighbor bangs on their ceiling with a broom. Lydia stops pacing. The last thing she needs is for her neighbors to complain to the landlord again.

Allison's phone sits on the coffee table. From it comes Matt's voice: _"I checked Stapleton's e-mails and phone records. He wasn't using either of them to communicate with Deucalion."_

Lydia spits out a vehement "_Fuck_," and drops into a chair.

Hesitantly, Allison says, "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Lydia replies. "He didn't even touch me."

"That's not what I meant, Lydia. A guy committed suicide right in front of you. Is that—do you need to—"

"No," Lydia says. "You're my lone gunman, not my therapist. We are not going to talk about our feelings."

Allison sighs. "Fine. I guess I'll just go fuck myself."

"Sorry. I'm in a bad mood." Lydia drags a hand through her hair, pushing it away from her face. "I hate this case. Nothing but dead ends."

"So what's the plan?"

Lydia shrugs. "Harass my informants and wait for more bodies to drop."

"You're up against an occult domestic terrorist whose followers would rather slit their own throats than betray him," Allison points out. "You're gonna need a better plan than that."

**o**

The library was part of an eighteenth-century monastery in Lima. It was beautiful, filled with some of the oldest and rarest books in the world, and Cora probably would've appreciated it more if she hadn't been staggering through it in the dead of night, bleeding from two bullet holes in her leg.

"Try not to get blood on anything valuable," Braeden suggested, her arm wrapped around Cora's waist as she helped her limp down the hall.

"This is your fault," Cora said.

"You're the werewolf," Braeden pointed out. "It's you they're after."

They stumbled through the door to the gallery, and Cora said, "Oh, shit."

The gallery was actually a fairly small room, currently home to an exhibit on ancient Rome. The display cases were full of Roman coins and pottery, while the walls were lined with framed pages from a long-lost Latin spellbook. The pages had been part of the library's collection for over three hundred years.

The gallery was also presently occupied by a skinny, academic-looking man in a knit sweater.

The man said, "Who the hell are you?"

"Who the hell are _you_?" Braeden shot back. "This place is supposed to be closed!"

"I have permission to—is that blood?"

Cora looked down at her leg. The wounds were finally starting to close and heal. And the man had noticed. His eyes widened in shock.

Down the hall, a door slammed open. Someone started barking orders.

The man's mouth opened. Cora lunged forward and clamped her hand over it, pushing him back against a display case.

"We're not gonna hurt you," she whispered, "but right now you need to be quiet."

The man nodded.

Cora closed her eyes and listened, tracking the hunters' progress through the monastery. Footsteps approached the door.

Someone tried the doorknob. The door started to open. Braeden slammed it shut again and threw the deadbolt.

The guy on the other side of the door shouted. Cora heard the _click_ of a safety switching off and yelled, "Down!"

A spray of bullets tore through the door. Braeden ducked away, and Cora dragged the man in her grip behind the display case.

Braeden scrambled across the floor to join Cora. "No other doors. I think we're stuck."

The man groaned. "Am I bleeding?"

There was a long, bloody furrow across the back of his head, and beneath that the white of bone.

"You took a bullet to your head," Braeden said. "It must've bounced off your skull."

More voices gathered on the other side of the door. It shook in its frame as the hunters tried to force it open.

Cora cupped her hand around the back of the man's head and helped him lie down on the floor. She glanced up at the display case. "Do you think these are wired up to an alarm?"

"Probably," Braeden said.

There was another impact against the door, and the deadbolt gave way.

Cora reached up and smashed the glass of the display case with her fist.

An alarm shrieked. Someone started barking orders again. Cora heard the hunters retreat.

Braeden sprang to her feet and began grabbing the framed pages off the walls, shoving them into her backpack. "Good job. Let's go."

The alarm abruptly cut off, and in the resounding silence that followed Cora heard the man say, his voice shaking, "Don't leave."

Cora looked down at him, then back up at Braeden.

"We can't," Braeden said. "The cops are gonna be here soon."

"Go," Cora replied. "I'll stay with him."

"Cora—"

"It's our fault," Cora snarled. "Take the pages and go. I'll meet you back at the hotel."

Braeden shouldered the backpack, hesitated a moment, then nodded. "Okay."

Her footsteps faded away down the hall, and the man said, "Thank you."

Blood poured into Cora's palm. She could feel it dripping through her fingers and over the sides of her hand. She bit her lip and tried to ignore the sound of droplets hitting the floor. "... What's your name?"

"Dominic." After a moment, he added, "I can't see."

"I'm sorry."

Dominic's hands started to shake. Cora reached out with her free hand and took one of his.

He said, "How old are you?"

"Fourteen."

"Why did those people shoot at you?"

"They think I might hurt someone," Cora said. "They think I'm a monster."

"You're not."

Cora swallowed. "Thank you."

Dominic's eyes fluttered closed. Sirens filtered in at the edge of Cora's hearing.

"They're almost here," Cora said. "I need to go."

Dominic didn't respond. His breathing slowed, became shallow.

Cora stumbled to her feet and ran.

* * *

**Next: "Storm Moon"**


	5. Storm Moon

**Notes:** Chapter warning for a really big spider.

* * *

**Chapter Five: "Storm Moon"**

The island was just off the coast of Ecuador, too small, rocky, and densely forested to be of much use to anyone. It was also said to be cursed, but the boatman didn't know the meaning of the word 'fear,' on account of the fact that he spoke no English whatsoever.

At fifteen, Cora was at the age where she could pass for anything from thirteen to twenty-five. Today she was claiming to be nineteen, and Braeden's research assistant.

Voice raised so Braeden could hear her over the noise of the boat's engine, Cora said, "What's the name again?"

"Josef Amsel," Braeden said. "He was a member of the Thule Society."

"Who were they?"

"Long story short, Nazi black magicians. Amsel fled Germany after the war. This island was his last known destination."

"And Amsel had a Codex page?"

"Not just one," Braeden said. "He grabbed the Society's entire collection on his way out of the country. That's at least thirty pages."

"_Thirty?_"

"And they were looking for more."

Cora couldn't help but ask. "What would've happened if they'd found them all?"

"Well," Braeden said, thinking it over, "for starters, I'd be dead and you'd be speaking German right now."

The boatman shouted something over his shoulder.

Cora's Spanish was, at best, limited. She turned to Braeden. "What'd he say?"

"He says we're almost there."

The sun set behind the dark shape of the island. The boatman let them off near a collection of planks that was probably supposed to be a dock and said something to Braeden. She replied, terse and clipped, and the boatman shook his head.

Cora said, "What's wrong?"

"He says he's not gonna wait for us," Braeden said. "He'll be back tomorrow."

The boatman said something else, and fired up the engine. Cora and Braeden stood on the beach and watched the boat disappear over the horizon.

"What'd he say that time?"

"I think it was 'god help you,' but I'm not sure." Braeden looked up at the sky and frowned. "Full moon tonight. Should I be worried?"

"I'll be fine," Cora said.

**o**

"I'll be fine," Cora says.

The diner isn't particularly busy, and the waitress has a tendency to hover, so Derek and Cora's conversation has been pretty stop-and-start. Cora gives up trying to spear a piece of bacon on her fork and picks it up with her fingers instead.

"I guess you've been doing okay up until now," Derek says. "Do you want to be alone? I'll understand, if you don't want to spend the full moon with the pack."

The bacon's too crunchy for Cora's taste; she drops it back onto the plate. "Are they under control?"

"Mostly," Derek says with a shrug. "There was an incident with Isaac last month, but we handled it."

"Okay. No problems, then."

Derek's breakfast is more or less untouched. Cora reaches over and steals an undercooked piece of bacon. Derek raises an eyebrow at her, although he's obviously trying to hide a smile.

"What?" Cora says. "You hate chewy bacon."

The smile finally slips free of Derek's control. He ducks his head.

Cora chews, swallows, and says, "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"Why are we having this conversation here, and not back at the loft? I'm not complaining about the free breakfast, I'm just curious."

"Old habit," Derek says. His smile fades a little. "Laura used to take me out whenever she needed to talk to me about something uncomfortable. Whenever she needed neutral territory, I guess."

Cora says, "Or she figured you'd be more likely to listen if she fed you first."

"Or that," Derek concedes.

Cora pokes at the leftover scraps of egg on her plate. "I remember Mom used to say Laura would make a great Alpha someday."

Derek says, "She was right."

**o**

'America's Largest Woodcock' is a New Mexico tourist trap, out in the middle of nowhere. Much to the disappointment of the countless road-tripping frat boys who pass through the area, it's a giant fiberglass statue of a bird.

A gazebo sits a few yards away, presumably so that visitors can sit and admire America's Largest Woodcock in all its splendor. As Lydia's rental car pulls into the parking lot, she notes that the gazebo is occupied: there's a man lounging across one of the benches, and a woman pacing back and forth across the floor.

"Good morning," Lydia says as she approaches them. "I'm Lydia Martin."

The man hops up off the bench and moves to stand beside the woman, who crosses her arms and says, "I asked to speak with the director."

The woman is tiny, even shorter than Lydia but about the same age, with a face that an eloquent observer would call 'cherubic,' provided they weren't distracted by the horns that sprout from her forehead and curl around to frame it.

"Director Heidingsfeld doesn't leave Baltimore unless there's a congressional hearing or his mother calls," Lydia says. "I'm the highest-ranking Institute official who was willing to come all the way out here and meet with you. Sorry."

The woman's eyes narrow, and she tilts her head slightly to the side. "I guess I'll take what I can get." She stands up a little straighter and clasps her hands behind her back, which doesn't do much to improve her height but makes her look a little bit less like a grad student. "I'm Paige, king of the clan Defiant Regret. This is our shaman, Jamie."

"Hi," says the man, stepping forward to shake Lydia's hand. He's got long dark hair and a short, scruffy beard; the overall impression is vaguely messianic, although somewhat ruined by the knit cap and tartan kilt.

Lydia's heard of the clans, although she's never encountered them personally. They're nomads, members of the magical community who can't—or won't—live among humans. And they tend to avoid contact with human governments, which makes this meeting something of an event.

"We've heard the Institute is investigating someone named Deucalion," Paige says. "Is that true?"

"That might be the case," Lydia says. "What's your interest?"

"He's been causing problems for us," Jamie says. "His campaign has our clan's younger members riled up. Last time we bought supplies, there were some, uh, violent encounters with the townies."

"The other kings are having similar problems," Paige says. "We're losing people. They're leaving to join Deucalion. I don't really care what happens to him, but I want the kids he's recruited back home where they belong."

"That may not be an option," Lydia says. "There's a good chance your missing people have participated in some pretty horrific crimes."

Paige shakes her head. "If that's the case, we'll deal with them. Not you."

"All we're asking is that you be careful when dealing with Deucalion's followers," Jamie says. "Please. We know how the U.S. government likes to operate."

Lydia raises an eyebrow. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means you should think twice before you drone-strike Deucalion to death." Paige steps closer, into Lydia's personal space. "Let me make myself clear. If your government executes my people, you won't like what happens next."

**o**

"You're lucky my parents don't give a shit," Erica says. "Most kids wouldn't be allowed to have a slumber party on a Monday night."

Jackson makes a face. "Do you have to call it that?"

"Yes."

"Are you gonna paint my toenails again?" Isaac says, wary. "Because that was difficult to explain in the locker room."

"You didn't explain," Jackson points out. "You just glared at everybody who asked until they ran away."

In the safe haven of the kitchen, Cora says, "Are they always like this?"

Boyd replies, "Most of the time, yeah."

Derek clears his throat and, when he's recaptured the pack's attention, says, "So you're all gonna be here Monday night?"

Stiles raises a hand. "I'm not. Scott wants me to spend the full moon with him, just in case."

Cora says, "Scott?"

"Another werewolf," Derek says.

"But not one of your pack?"

"No."

Cora can see Derek tensing up. She elects to drop the subject. "Okay."

After a second, Derek continues, "Oh, and no video games this time."

There's a cacophony of protest from Erica and Jackson. Isaac just sits there and looks sheepish.

Monday night is probably going to be a disaster. But Cora's been through worse.

**o**

There were no trails on the island, because there were no animals big enough to make them. Braeden pushed a branch out of her face and grumbled. "I should've brought a machete."

The trees were huge and old, the canopy so thick it blocked the moonlight. The air was too still, too heavy. It was quiet, but tiny little noises tugged at the edge of Cora's awareness. Like a whispered conversation too far away to hear.

Braeden said, "Maybe we should make camp. Get some rest, do the rest of our exploring in daylight."

"I don't want to sleep here." Cora rubbed her eyes, then her temples. She felt dizzy, disconnected. Maybe it was the moon.

"I guess daylight wouldn't make much difference anyway." Braeden dug in her pocket and pulled out a compass. It wasn't a normal compass; the needle was made of wood, not metal, and there were thin, spiraling pictograms drawn around the edge. The needle spun for a moment, then settled in one direction that definitely wasn't north.

Cora, tipped up onto her toes so she could peer over Braeden's shoulder, said, "Is that what we're looking for?"

"Could be," Braeden said. "Something on this island is generating a strong magical field."

Braeden trudged in the direction the needle indicated, muttering to herself. Cora followed along behind. The whispers got louder.

"Can you hear that?" Cora said.

"Hear what?"

"Like... voices. People's voices."

Braeden turned and stared at Cora with a blank face for a moment, then said, "Are you sure you're okay?"

"It's not the moon," Cora insisted. "It's—"

One of the whispers resolved into a clear, familiar voice: "_Cora._"

Cora froze. "Mom?"

Braeden reached out to grab her. "Cora, don't—"

But she was already gone.

Cora crashed through the trees, snapping branches out of her path, following the ghost of a voice, knowing it was impossible, but helpless in the grip of delirious hope—

Her heel hit a patch of mud. Cora landed flat on her back, gasping for breath.

She couldn't hear her mother anymore. Or Braeden. There was no sound at all besides her own breathing and the oppressive silence of the forest.

"Idiot," Cora growled, sitting up. "You _moron_."

There was no wind, so Cora couldn't catch Braeden's scent. She turned around and followed the trail she'd broken through the trees, but that only led her to a dead end at the bottom of a cliff she'd never seen before. Cora sat down, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.

"Okay," she said. "This island isn't that big. I can just walk until I hit the coast." She took another breath. "And then I can follow the coast until I find the dock."

From somewhere in the vicinity of her right foot, a voice said, "I think that's a marvelous plan."

**o**

The periodical archive is usually the quietest part of any library, provided that library doesn't have a room dedicated entirely to tax law. It's in the periodical archive that Lydia finds who she's looking for.

"Danielle?" Lydia says, sitting at the table and smoothing her skirt.

"And you must be Lydia," the woman says. She looks Lydia over and is obviously unimpressed by what she sees. "Let's make this quick. If the guys find out I've been talking to you, my desk is gonna wind up in the parking lot. On fire."

"_That's_ not in keeping with the spirit of interdepartmental cooperation."

"Pretty rich, coming from you."

Artificially pleasant, Lydia says, "When the Institute believes we have information that will lead to an arrest, we'll gladly share it with the FBI. Until that point, we're required to follow nondisclosure protocols."

"That must be so hard for you," Danielle says flatly.

"Are you going to brief me or not?"

Danielle exhales a long-suffering sigh. "Fine." She settles back in her chair. "'Deucalion' is a name from Greek mythology, but pretty obscure. The kind of guy who orchestrates mass murders and leaves pretentious notes written in blood wouldn't have picked his alias out of a hat. It means something to him. He might be an academic, or he might be a layman with an obsession."

Lydia nods. "What do you think?"

"I think he's from a privileged background," Danielle says. "Plenty of money, plenty of contacts."

"Any suspects?"

"Right now the guys are ready to arrest every trust fund academic in the country and hit them with a phone book until they confess," Danielle says. "So no, we don't have any suspects."

"That's exactly the kind of finesse and tact I've come to expect from the FBI."

"Fuck you," Danielle snaps. "We've got hundreds of families wondering why their loved ones were slaughtered and strung up like pieces of meat. We've got the press _and_ the government harassing us because we can't catch this guy. And we've got cloak-and-dagger jackasses like _you_ sneering at us because you won't give us the information we need."

As diplomatically as she can, Lydia says, "This case requires a lighter touch."

"'A lighter touch'? Who do you think we are, the LAPD?"

"The FBI wants Deucalion's head on a pike and every one of his followers in a hole somewhere getting waterboarded," Lydia says, "and if that happens we'll all have a lot more to worry about than some bad press."

"I don't have time for this." Danielle stands, the scrape of her chair against the floor shockingly loud. "You sit there and spout cryptic bullshit. Have fun. I'm gonna go do my damn job."

She strides away. Lydia stays seated, nails drumming on the tabletop, turning the case over in her head.

**o**

Erica slams the loft door shut and shouts, "Boyd brought Dominion!"

On the couch, Derek drops his face into his hands and sighs.

Cora says, "What's Dominion?"

"It's a card game," Derek says, slightly muffled.

Boyd slings his backpack off his shoulder and drops it onto the coffee table. "You said no video games."

Derek lifts his head. "I said no video games because Isaac gets competitive and starts throwing punches. Which is also what happens whenever you play Dominion."

"That only happened twice," Isaac protests, very quietly.

As it turns out, Dominion isn't just a card game. It's an impossibly complicated card game whose sadistic designer apparently had an obsession with medieval European feudalism. Near as Cora can tell, it largely involves Erica, Isaac, and Jackson arguing with each other over the rules while Boyd quietly sweeps up all the best cards.

After the second round, Erica says, "Hey, Cora? I can sit this next one out, if you wanna play."

"I'll pass," Cora says. "Thanks."

Cora retreats to the kitchen, where Derek is monitoring the pizzas in the oven. Ordering food on a full moon is generally a bad idea. Somebody might try to eat the delivery guy.

"Hey," Cora says.

Derek says, "Hey. Any blood yet?"

"No, but the night is young."

Cora sits next to Derek on the floor. It's been almost half an hour, and the pizzas still aren't done. "This is a really terrible oven."

"I could probably feed it to them raw," Derek muses. "They're teenage werewolves on a full moon. They wouldn't notice."

"We heard that!" Jackson shouts.

"Congratulations!" Derek fires back.

Cora pulls her knees up and rests her chin on her folded arms. "Is this what you always do on full moons?"

"In the early days, I had to lock them in a basement."

"Which _sucked_," Erica yells.

Derek sits up a little and shouts, "Private conversation!"

"So talk quieter!"

Cora says, "What about you and Laura?"

Derek blinks, surprised. They haven't talked about Laura since the diner. Cora instantly regrets asking, but Derek says, "When we were on the road, we'd hole up someplace unpopulated. But we never had any problems with control after the fire." Old guilt flashes across his face. "Except for that first full moon."

"What happened?"

"I'll tell you some other time."

Cora nods and shuffles over so she can press her shoulder against his. "What about New York?"

"We'd stay in, usually," Derek says. "Laura would make dinner."

Cora stifles a laugh. "Laura didn't cook."

"She learned," Derek says, smiling a little. "And guess who was her guinea pig."

"Oh, god."

"I think she liked the idea of providing for her pack," Derek adds. "She didn't really know how to be an Alpha. She was winging it. Constantly worried she was doing it wrong." He pauses. "Kind of like me, actually."

Cora nudges him with her elbow. "I think you're doing okay."

**o**

Cora kept her eyes shut, her breathing too loud in the island's overwhelming, dead silence.

"I didn't hear that," she said. "I'm gonna open my eyes, and there will be nothing there."

The voice by her foot said, "Uh."

Cora opened her eyes. There was a small black bird perched on a rock next to her feet, with white breast feathers and a long, iridescent tail. It looked like a tiny crow wearing a tuxedo.

"A magpie," Cora said, voice dull with disbelief. "In Ecuador."

"I'm well-traveled," said the magpie.

"A _talking_ magpie in Ecuador."

"I'm as surprised as you are," said the magpie. "Imagine being me, eating garbage, dodging cats, I fall asleep on a boat, next thing I know I'm washing up on the beach here. And all of a sudden I'm _thinking_, and I can _talk_, and I've got nobody to talk _to_. Do you have any idea what that's like?"

"... No," Cora said. "Not really."

The magpie hopped up onto Cora's knee. "So what are you doing here, anyway? Humans don't come here. I've seen them daring each other to do it, but they never get off the boat."

"I'm here with a friend," Cora said, and because it was worth a shot: "Have you seen her?"

"Nope." The magpie ruffled its feathers. "The only other human I've actually seen on the island is the dead guy."

"... What dead guy?"

"The one in the cabin. I used to go talk at him all the time."

Cora stood, dislodging the magpie, who fluttered up onto a branch and glared at her in indignation.

"Can you show me where this dead guy is?" Cora said.

"Uh, you probably don't want to go there."

"I really do."

"Fine," huffed the magpie. "Your funeral."

It took off through the trees. Cora ran to keep up. Every time she thought she was lost, the magpie made a noise like someone inhaling through a kazoo, and she followed the sound until she found it again.

The ground became steeper. The trees thinned out a little, revealing the cabin. It looked ridiculous, a cozy little vacation home nestled in the center of an impenetrable, hostile wilderness.

"He's in there," the magpie said. "You should be careful. There's a spider."

Cora stared at the magpie. "Seriously?"

"It's a really big spider."

Cora rolled her eyes and climbed up onto the path to the front door.

The door stuck. Cora had to force it open. The air inside the cabin was stale; dust and thick white spiderwebs covered every surface. The webs were huge, almost forming an opaque layer in some places.

The front room was large and open, with big windows to catch the light that never actually made it through the forest canopy. The body of Josef Amsel sat in the corner, little more than a mummified skeleton at this point, wrapped head to toe in webs.

A leather portfolio lay on the ground next to the body, its zipper rusted shut. Cora tore it open, revealing the stack of parchment inside.

There was a noise behind her, nothing more than a near-silent rustle. Cora tensed and instinctively dodged away. There was a rush of air, and the spider landed heavily where Cora had been kneeling.

The magpie had been right. It was a really big spider.

It was bigger than Cora, covered in bristles, the weak light giving its exoskeleton an oily sheen. The spider turned and waved its pedipalps at her; it didn't hiss, or chitter, or make any noise at all. Eight eyes regarded her with dismissive, hostile intelligence.

Cora didn't usually hate spiders—when she was younger, she'd been pretty fond of them—but she hated _this_ spider.

Her heart pounded. The full moon made the shift easy; her fangs dropped, her claws extended, and she snarled at the thing, hunching down on all fours.

The spider leapt again, fangs gleaming in the low light. Cora lashed out with her claws, slashing it across the abdomen and pushing it away. The spider landed across the room with a _thud_.

Cora grabbed the portfolio and ran. She could feel the spider behind her, following her, even if she couldn't hear it. There was a persistent, tingling shiver between her shoulders. The front door was still open; Cora squeezed through and yanked it shut.

A second later, the door shuddered as the spider slammed against it.

Cora slipped on her way down the hill and slid the rest of the way. Her breathing came fast and hard, her vision blurring. The whispers were back, her mother's voice among them, calling to her.

"Shut _up!_" Cora screamed, distorted around her fangs. "Shut up! She's dead, they're all dead! Leave me alone!"

Silence fell, and that was even worse.

Cora curled up into a ball and sobbed, tears streaming down her face.

**o**

New York has always been a little too much for Lydia's taste: too noisy, too crowded, too big. Director Heidingsfeld once told her she'd find something to love about the city if she stuck around for more than five minutes, but she's never had the patience.

Lydia takes her shoes off halfway up the staircase, and once she's out onto the tower's balcony she takes a deep breath and tries not to look as shattered by the climb as she is.

The sun is setting. From up here, New York almost looks like a place humans could survive. Lydia leans on the banister, next to a huge stone gargoyle, and waits.

A pigeon flutters down from the roof and lands in the gargoyle's open mouth. There's a muffled _squawk_, followed by a noise like a bag of chicken bones being crushed between two rocks. Which is, essentially, what just happened.

Lydia says, "Morning, Mike."

The gargoyle yawns. "Mornin', Miss Martin. What brings you to New York?"

Stone grinds against stone as Mike stretches, working the stiffness out of his limbs. He extends his small, useless wings and folds them again.

Lydia says, "I heard Deucalion was in the city a little while ago."

Mike's face settles into a pained expression. "Er."

"Don't tell me you're scared of him."

"You're not?"

Lydia shrugs.

"Fine." Mike slumps a little. "I heard he was here right around Christmas."

"Why?"

"Dunno," Mike says. "But his people were poking around museums, antique dealers... I heard they even broke into a few libraries. Looking for something. Some book."

"_What_ book?"

"Some kind of fancy spellbook," Mike says. "I didn't ask too many questions. The last thing I need is to attract that guy's attention."

"Okay." Lydia heads for the stairs. "Thanks, Mike."

Mike says, "Be careful, Miss Martin."

**o**

The rattle of the loft door as it slides open is enough to startle Cora awake. Stiles winces and mouths, "Sorry."

There are teenagers passed out all over the living room. Derek fell asleep propped up next to the couch, and Cora fell asleep propped up on him. She eases up off the floor, careful not to disturb anybody, and rolls her neck. It's probably going to be sore all day.

As Cora grabs a glass of water from the kitchen, Stiles asks, "How'd it go?"

"Fine," Cora says. "Nobody died. Isaac threatened to toss Jackson out the window, but I think that's just their thing."

"It is," Stiles confirms. "I can't even tell if they're friends or not."

Somebody's alarm goes off. Erica, Isaac, Jackson, and Derek simultaneously groan in protest as Boyd fumbles for his phone.

"Morning, kids," Stiles says, in a slightly manic tone that most people usually adopt after two or three coffees. Except, according to Derek, Stiles doesn't drink coffee.

Another chorus of groans emanates from the living room. Jackson flips him off.

"You should probably call first dibs on the shower," Stiles says to Cora. "It's about to get ugly."

**o**

Sunlight filtered through the forest canopy. Cora blinked and squeezed her eyes shut. She must've fallen asleep. Her eyes were gummy and sore, her nose felt raw, and she had a splitting headache.

"Morning," Braeden said.

Cora opened her eyes again. Braeden sat across from her, the magpie perched on her shoulder. She offered Cora a granola bar. Cora took it and uncurled; the portfolio fell out of her lap and onto the ground.

"So you found the Codex pages," Braeden said.

"Yeah," Cora replied. "Don't go in the cabin, there's a—"

"A really big spider, yeah," Braeden said. "Widdershins told me."

"Who?"

Braeden pointed to the magpie on her shoulder. "Widdershins. That's what I'm calling him."

"I like it," said the magpie.

Cora shook her head and unwrapped the granola bar, shoving half of it into her mouth. Braeden grabbed the portfolio, opened it, and said, "Well, that explains it."

"Explains what?" Cora said, mouth full.

"The pages weren't properly shielded," Braeden said. "There's a reason I stitch them back into the old binding. This many pages together, improperly contained, could produce a dangerously powerful magical field." She grinned. "We're sitting on a real live enchanted island. Hence the trees, the talking bird—"

"The giant spider," Cora added. "Spiders can't get that big. It's biologically impossible."

"So are werewolves, without enough magic." Braeden snapped the portfolio shut and checked her watch. "The boatman should be back soon."

"Good," Cora said. She tottered to her feet. "I want off this island as soon as possible."

Widdershins led them to the dock, chattering excitedly the whole time. After a few minutes, Braeden said, "Why'd you shout 'Mom' last night?"

"I thought I heard her voice," Cora replied. She'd told Braeden about the fire shortly after they'd met, but other than that there was a moratorium on discussion of Cora's family.

Braeden seemed to be considering something. Finally, she said, "You're not an Alpha."

"So?"

"So, if your whole pack were dead, wouldn't you be a—"

"I don't know!"

Braeden backed away, palms out. "Sorry."

More quietly, Cora said, "I can't hope, Braeden. Hope will kill me."

"Okay. I understand."

They didn't speak again until the boatman arrived, and the island was far behind them.

**o**

Lydia opens the hotel room door and finds Allison standing in the hall, holding a bag of Chinese take-out and wearing a baseball cap that reads, 'WANG'S: New York's Finest.'

"Did you mug my delivery guy?"

"I paid him an extra twenty bucks for the hat," Allison says, edging past Lydia into the room. "There are way too many surveillance cameras in this town."

"It's worse in London."

Allison drops the bag of food onto the table by the window, sits on the edge of the bed, and whips off the hat, shaking her hair out. "Did you get anything useful out of Mike?"

"Yeah," Lydia says. "Deucalion was here. He's looking for some kind of spellbook."

"Which lines up with what Stapleton told you," Allison says. "Any idea what Deucalion's planning?"

Lydia settles into a chair. "I think... the mass murders, the notes. They're a misdirection. Deucalion's using them to rally support, but they're also meant to draw attention away from what he's really after."

"The spellbook."

"He needs it," Lydia says. "For some reason, he _needs_ this book. He wouldn't spend so many resources looking for it, otherwise."

"So," Allison says, contemplative. "I guess we should find it first."

* * *

**Next: "Dog Eat Dog"**


End file.
